File Format:

Adobe Reader

The following transcription taken from videotapes converted to
cassette tapes of interviews with retired Fish and Wildlife Service
pilots and aircraft mechanics. Video interview made January 2000,
in Anchorage, Alaska as part of the annual pilots training.
(Transcription of cassette tapes by Mary E. Smith, 4120 Dorothy
Drive, Anchorage, Alaska, March 2002.)
John Sarvis
Welcome to all of you. We are going to try and record this so please pass
the mike around when you and/or the next person speak. Let’s start with
Jerry Lawhorn. Why don’t you tell us what your role was and what you did.
Jerry Lawhorn
Thanks. I wrote a few notes here and they are not in any sequence. You
will just have to bear with me. It says here that I started with the Fish and
Wildlife Aircraft Division in 1956. I came on board from Alaska Airlines. I
was their Bush Maintenance Foreman then. It gave me a good back ground
because they had 30+ airplanes and I specialized in non-standard airplanes.
They had one of everything that was ever built I believe. From the Douglas
Dolphin to the tri-motor Stinsons, the Bellanca’s, the Sky Rocket’s, Pace
Maker’s, Travel Air, Norseman, AG-19’s, and a little bit of everything.
When they got out of the business of Bush airplane flying, it left me kind of
afoot so they wanted me to go with the main line and be the maintenance
2
foreman over there. I told them that I had just as soon walk down the street
and see if I couldn’t get a job. So, I wandered down the street and sure
enough, Tom Wardleigh and Theron Smith hired me, along with one of my
mechanics. I stayed through the whole smear. It was kind of rough and
tumbly first off because we weren’t a State yet; still a Territory and
everything was kind of rough around the edges.
We gradually became the facility that all the operators looked up to for a
change. We were always called the Fish and Wildlife Service or the Federal
Government. It wasn’t, what they call now, the Feds. They showed a lot of
respect for us and it was a place that all the mechanics would like to go to
work because of the quality of the maintenance and the people. There
weren’t too many local folks running around then either.
We were, as Theron will explain, an unfunded division of the Fish and
Wildlife. We all realized that we were leaches. All the various branches
had to divvy up some of their money to support us. We were a necessary
evil. We had the means for them to get around the country. Theron had to
be quite a talker to make sure everyone divvied up enough for us leaches to
do our job. We became quite a “can do” organization. There was nothing
that
anybody suggested to us that we couldn’t try to do one way or the other. If
there was a better way to go about that we would sure give it a go.
Tom Wardleigh was second in command there and Theron was the main
boss. He was the supervisor. It wasn’t too long after I got there that Tom
Wardleigh saw that there wasn’t really any way for him to go up unless
Theron dropped dead somewhere along the line. He decided to transfer over
to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for a little better look at his
economic future.
That left me kind of filling Tom’s slot. Theron was such a great boss that he
did all the work in dredging up the money for me to play with! He was a
boss that pointed me and then stepped back out of the way. You couldn’t
beat a boss like that especially when he gave you funds to work with. He
would have to get me back in line some times because I would tend to get a
little carried away on some of my projects.
4
We established a lot of precedence through the aircraft division. Other
operators would, once in awhile, if they had a problem with an airplane,
come over and see if we could solve the problem. We established a lot of
modifications to the standard to fit in with their operation. They built these
darn things in Kansas and Pennsylvania and they are made for concrete
runways and training airplanes and that sort of thing. They didn’t fit very
well with our rough and tumble backwoods business. We constantly were
modifying things.
We had a maintenance turnover of maybe losing a mechanic every year or
two and by and large those folks that went away, they went with the FAA
and became general aviation maintenance inspectors. We produced quite a
few of FAA folks from our maintenance facility.
We depended a lot on the military surplus airplanes and parts. We had the
Grumman Goose which was all surplus and we ended up with a train carload
of spare parts for them. We also absconded with 33 R9-85 engines that were
freshly overhauled by the military. We had free engines that the taxpayers
had already paid for. All we had to do was pay for the freight to get them up
here. We had free airplanes, free parts and free engines. All we had to do
5
was provide gas. They made a real good Bush plane for us to supply our
camps. We hauled out boats and motors, etc., to the camps.
We established all kinds of modifications. Tom Wardleigh and I,
essentially, started the big tires on modern airplanes in Alaska. The military,
years ago, right after WWII, decided that the L-19’s and all their liaison
airplanes, the off-airport airplanes, needed tandem landing gears. I don’t
know how many of you here today know what a tandem landing gear is but
it is one wheel ahead of the other wheel with the original gear axle in-between.
That let both gears articulate.
We absconded with a few sets of those and bought a few sets. That made
all the operators want them too. They were great to an extent in that if you
are on gravel or dirt you could turn the airplane quite readily. If you were on
hard surface, which was not likely then, it would take a city block to turn the
darn things around. You were trying to scrub one wheel against the other
and they only had brakes on the rear wheel and they were better than nothing
but we were constantly gusseting from landing gear legs because of the
twisting motion. They weren’t built to be twisted like that. The gear would
crack.
6
We ended up with some Curtis Robbin tires. They were 25x11x4. The Cub
tires and wheels were 800x4. Those folks measured 4 inches different! The
Curtis Robbin tire is about 5 inches inside, not 4. I don’t know who built
their measuring sticks but after repairing some of these landing gears and
fighting that battle, I asked Tom if he thought that Wes Landis could build
us some adapters where we could adapt one 4” tire to a 4” wheel. He
allowed as by golly, he would go and see.
Well, it wasn’t long until the government airplanes came out with big tires.
The operators, seeing all this that the government people were doing,
thought this to be the greatest, latest thing so sure enough, everybody started
using big tires in Alaska. I don’t know if Tom and I are responsible for that
or not but we sure were around the hangar.
We had a radio communications system. Everybody knew where everybody
was at all times. We had a lot of field stations and there was a fellow who
went to McGrath for the summer. He used to come over to my place and
drink home brew. He thought that was pretty good stuff. He was going to
be based over in McGrath for three months. One evening he called me up
on the radio (had one at my house) and wanted to know what all the
7
consistencies were for the home brew. I started out telling him all the stuff
and as it turned out, every field station in Alaska had a comment as to what
kind of bottles to use, you name it, from Tok to Dillingham, from Kotzebue
to a Research vessel in Juneau! This tells you two things – our
communications system was better than you can imagine and every body
liked to drink beer! With that, I’d like to turn this microphone over to
someone else for awhile.
8
Jim Branson
Hello. I went to work for the Fish and Wildlife Service in Southeast as a
boat operator/enforcement officer in 1949. The first permanent job that I
could get with the outfit was in Anchorage in 1951. I moved here to
Anchorage and soloed in 1952. I was then shipped over to Kodiak. That
kind of cut into my flight training. I got back to Kenai in 1955 and finally
got enough time. As I recall, it was 100 hours for a private license in those
days. I got checked out in government airplanes, worked through Statehood
and in 1963 finally got tired of Holger Larsen? and switched back to the
National Marine Fisheries Service and spent the next 13 years in Kodiak
working as an enforcement officer. I retired from them in 1976 and then
spent the last 12 years of my career with the North Pacific Fisheries
Management Council.
I am really a pretty low time pilot. I have a little over 2000 hours and never
had anything but a single engine private license. I flew Cubs, Pacers, 180’s,
170’s and a couple things that Lawhorn put together. One called a sub-Cub.
I recall it as a 115 Pacer fuselage with a 150 in it and Super Cub wings. It
was a pretty good airplane until the waterfowl biologists busted it up.
9
That’s about it. I think someone pointed out earlier here that those were
really grand times. I know in 1963, Ray Tremblay and I and others here
would sit around and talk about the good old days but you guys here this
morning reminded me how nice it is to be retired (laughter and clapping).
Richard Hensel:
I started out in the mid 1950’s and more or less bounced along the first few
years as a seasonal em[ployee, mostly with River Basin Studies, until I was
assigned full time to Kodiak as an Assistant Refuge Manager. Shortly
thereafter, I checked out and became qualified to operate a government
Supercub. I flew for a total of about 8 years and spent much time trying to
line p the black ball along two dark lines; my friends called me “Yaw.” I
also flew some in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region after having
transferred in 1970 to Anchorage. I too am basically a low time pilot and
owe much to Theron Smith. Thank you, Theron, for helping me survive for
you’re the guy who gave 100% when giving check rides to ensure I and
others like me made landings with their skin intact.
I might conclude these opening remarks by saying that in the summer of
1956, as I walked around the hull of a Goose parked by the Lake Hood
10
hangar, I overheard some sputtering sounds coming from the cockpit
window. I hollered an hello upward and from the window pops a little 9
year-old boy who had been making playful sounds of a running engine---
that was this guy right here today, Terry Smith.
Terry Smith
I started with the Fish and Wildlife Service in 1949. I was two years old!
Dad took a job with the Fish and Wildlife Aircraft Division as the Aircraft
Supervisor. No one knew quite what that was. I have a number of letters
that he sent just recently that talk about he and Clarence Rhode trying to
define what the job might entail and trying to sort out the Aircraft Division
in total. I was raised in the Fish and Wildlife hangar. We figured roughly
close to 5,000 hours of government airplanes before I left to go to college. I
was able to benefit probably more than any other single pilot from all the
adages, advice and subtleties that Dad had to offer.
Dad retired in 1973 and Gordon Watson needed someone to fly the turbine-
Goose. I had been spending my entire life trying to get to a point to go to
work for Fish and Wildlife and fly the Grumman. I flew the Grumman all
11
through 1973 and 1974 and came back from South America with N-780 as
an OAS (Office of Aircraft Services) pilot.
It had happened while we were gone. It was a relationship that was basically
not to be because with the initial interview process I had not worked for
OAS. Their philosophy was that anything that you did with the Grumman
Goose could be done with a big helicopter. That was the beginning of the
end of our relationship.
I went on to do other things in aviation. As a “free” employee of the Fish
and Wildlife Service from ages 2 through 22 and as a “true” employee were
probably the best years that I have ever had. The operation as it grew during
the territorial years with Jerry and Tom and Dad running the Aircraft
Division, I can truly tell you that even at home, the conversations were all
around getting the job done. The Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, Sport
Fisheries, Game Management, or Waterfowl would come up with a problem.
The problem would be “we need to do this.” The conversation around our
house, even at the dinner table, was “man, this is going to be interesting” and
between Tom, Jerry, Dad, and the whole group out there at the hangar, the
12
Aircraft Division for the Fish and Wildlife Service was truly dedicated to the
Bureau.
There never was any money. That was always the other part of the
discussions on a general basis. The 180 showed up and it wouldn’t go on
any of the floats that were in the fleet. The 3430’s (capacity of this plane, JL
note) were available because they would go on the Cessna 195 that the Air
Force used for search and rescue. Consequently, all of you have probably
seen pictures of the only installation of 3430’s on the 180’s for the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service in Alaska.
Jerry stuck the airplane on there in the proper fashion. A number of times
on Lake Hood, when the only airplane that would be out on the Lake for a
several hour period with the southeast wind blowing about 25 was a Fish and
Wildlife 180 on 3430’s with wide spreader bars and an airplane squatted
down between the floats.
It was truly a magical period in aviation history in Alaska because the
innovation creativity and the attitude that the job was what was important.
There wasn’t anything else. The job needed to get done safely and
13
efficiently. There wasn’t any money, so it always had to be done efficiently.
One of the people who benefited and added to that was Ray Tremblay.
Ray Tremblay
I started in early 1951 (1953 JL note) as an enforcement agent/pilot. I spent
my early career in Fairbanks; in 1956, moved to McGrath. I was in charge
of the McGrath district for 5 years then moved back to Fairbanks for 2 more
years then to Anchorage for the rest of my career. I retired in 1978 and took
over as aircraft supervisor for the Department of Public Safety. I spent 5
years there.
In listening to the stories here today, they all seem to be focusing on the
gentleman to my left here (Theron Smith) who was the first Fish and
Wildlife Service pilot. Everything that we did and all of our skills were
because of his tutelage and his patience and his willingness to spend
whatever time it took to get us off of dead center and into becoming a
functioning pilot.
I can remember several of my earlier check rides when this little kid would
come along and sit in the back seat and he knew more than I did! He would
14
be pointing out some of the mistakes that I would make and I really didn’t
like that very much!
Listening to you talking today, I don’t know whether you really want to hear
what we did. There was a pile of stuff that had to be flown from here to
there and if it fit in the airplane, you threw it in and you flew. We never
thought too much about weight and balance. We knew about it but it was a
job that had to be done and that is what we did. We put it in the airplane and
we would fly. If we couldn’t get off, then it was the airplane’s fault. That
doesn’t work today. When I was chief pilot for the Department of Public
Safety I rammed that home a lot with my pilots over there.
With that and with the understanding that we will probably have some other
things to say later, I will turn the mike over to my mentor here. I think the
key to any successful pilot in this kind of a business is to have the right
mentor, the kind that has been there, to work with and learn from his
mistakes.
15
This gentleman on my left (Theron Smith) is probably the pilot in Alaska
that knows more about all of the aspects of our flying than anyone else. He
is here today, he is alive to talk about flying!
Theron, you will have to forgive me for telling this one. Talking about
having to get the job done and talking about trying to get money, well what
Theron did was he flew for other agencies to make money to keep the Fish
and Wildlife Service Aircraft section going. I think it was the Park Service
that had two Jon boats, two people, and a bunch of freight to fly over the
Alaska Range to some lake. This was going to be done in a standard Beaver
on amphibian floats. Jerry lashed two Jon boats on the struts and Theron
took off in it and it flew! We didn’t even know if it was going to fly. Then,
after he found out it would fly, he then came back and loaded it up with gas,
all tanks.
He then loaded the people, all their freight, went down and took off on the
west runway at International, went roaring down the runway, finally got it
off and settled into Cook Inlet. He taxied around and the passengers had to
get out and walk through the mud to get back to the airport because he
couldn’t get back off again. Finally, he took off and I think by the time he
16
got to Kenai, he was able to get airborne and get back to the runway. This is
the kind of a guy that Theron was.
What you all want to do here is listen to these stories but don’t try to apply
these experiences to your own flying because in this day and age, you will
not get away with it! Theron, here you are.
Theron Smith
That was quite a job. If I flew the plane with one boat, it worked fine, if I
put two boats on, it didn’t work worth a damn.
I was born here in Anchorage. My dad was working for the railroad. We
left Anchorage and went to Palmer and we lived there many years.
The Nation decided that maybe more pilots were needed in the Navy so they
started on the rest of the states and they finally came to Anchorage and they
had about 25 people in Anchorage who could be trained as pilots. They had
a paper where you wrote down what you did and then they decided who was
going to learn or not. Of course, I had to drive from Palmer down to
Anchorage.
17
The road was pretty new then. I would go from Palmer to Anchorage about
three times a week and go to teach at the school on paper you know. I found
out that there was about two months, I guess, and then they decided who was
going to pass and who was not. Well, I passed. There were about 5 of us
that made it. I was working for the road commission up on the mountain
over there. I was a pretty good mechanic then because my dad taught me. I
would go to Anchorage and fly an hour after work. That went on for about
2-1/2 months. I finally passed. I think I had about 55 hours at that time and
then you got a certificate. I was still working on the railroad.
The military started building in Alaska. I was working at the time over at
McGrath. I came to Anchorage and was flying to get my time up and the
war started. I enlisted. I learned to wash the dishes. I was wondering what
was going to happen after washing the dishes. I decided I was going to get
the hell out of there.
I found a guy that said they needed more people to be pilots. I learned to
teach those people and that went on for about a year and half. Then they
printed a thing that said that even if you didn’t have 2 years of pilot training
or school that they would be pilots. Of course, I was already a pilot so I had
18
to print out two papers what I had done and they then sent me down to
Seattle. Finally, I became a pilot.
They didn’t tell us where we were going and in the middle of the night they
called us up to get on the airplane. They gave us an envelope and told us to
carry it with us and told us that after we get into the air, then open up the
envelope and see where we were going. We had been there for a whole day
working and then we spent most of the night getting more stuff for the
airplane, food and all sorts of things. I think it was about 11:00 in the
morning.
I put most of the people asleep and I had a navigator up in the bow and had
the engineer sitting on the right side and away we went. Pretty soon I
thought the engineer was asleep. The next thing I knew, I had flown almost
4 hours, all of us asleep! The navigator came out of the bow and came up
and here we were. His eyes were big and he was scared as hell! He was
about ready to jump out.
I looked immediately to find out what the altitude was and where we were
going. It seemed like we were going pretty good. I told him to go on down
19
in the bow and start checking where we were and I would check on my side.
We finally determined that we were only about 40 miles south of where we
should be. There were a whole bunch of airplanes going out but I never saw
one of them anyway. (laughter) We were supposed to check in every hour
and I told the guy on the radio to call and just tell them that we couldn’t
make contact with anyone.
I was there for 6 months then the War ended. They hauled that same old
airplane back to the states. I went down to Florida and stayed there ‘til the
War ended. I learned quite a bit. I could run the airplane pretty well. As
soon as the War ended, I had quite a time deciding whether I was going to
stay in or get out. I finally decided to get out.
I bought a twin engine Cessna and overhauled it. It went along pretty well.
I was going to fly independent but the Nation was changing quite a lot.
Most of the airplanes available were busted and wouldn’t fly. I contacted
Ray Peterson and he wanted me to fly for him so I did. I went to Bethel. I
was working lots of hours, 7 days a week for about 4 years. Clarence
(Rhode) was flying there too, intermittently, then he came back to Fish and
Wildlife and then he went down to Juneau. I knew him pretty well and he
20
called me and asked me if I wanted a job to run the Fish and Wildlife
airplanes. I thought back and forth about it quite a bit.
I had been out at the Lake. There wasn’t much there. There were a few
airplanes around there and a few buildings. Fish and Wildlife had about
three old buildings that were about to collapse. There were some airplanes
in the snow. He contacted me again and I decided to go. There wasn’t
much there and they had practically no money. The old airplanes were
military. Some had floats on and some didn’t. A few had skis. Some didn’t
work. I had two guys, mechanics, and had the building there but it was so
old, you couldn’t close the door. For a couple of years, we were in trouble.
We were really having problems getting things going.
I want to tell you something here – I have had three strokes recently. The
last big one that I had, I can’t write, I can’t do anything, except I can talk!
(applause) Names are difficult for me to recall.
Clarence would try and make the money go by. He had about 20 people that
he tried to get enough money for people to live. It was the strangest
operation I ever saw in my life.
21
I thought, we just got to do a better job. Finally the hangars were built. We
built the first one ourselves (Terry: This hangar is currently the State Fish
and Game, the corrugated building that showed up on the railroad car and
there was no money to hire anyone to build it so the pilots and mechanics
put the hangar together and it is still there today.) We had a little bit of help
because there was an engineer down at the railroad. We made a deal with
him. He would come over and see us about every two weeks to see how we
were doing.
Then we got the new hangar but we didn’t have anything in it. We had no
chairs, shelves, files, no place to put things. At the time I was trying to get
rid of some of the old airplanes and get some better airplanes. Of course, I
needed some more money. Some of the guys that were flying up there had a
little more money from their outfits so we would buy a small airplane with
them for something. It was quite an independent operation.
It took about 5-6 years to get most of the small airplanes. We had the
Widgeons and we were getting Gooses by this time. We would go down to
New York or somewhere and fly one back here from the military. We
finally got six of them. We finally got rid of the Widgeons.
22
There was one guy down south of Anchorage, Dave Spencer, wanted his
Widgeon so bad. I was getting rid of the Widgeons. I did a bad thing for
him. He should have kept that Widgeon. He liked it so much. He flew
well. But anyway, I got rid of it and I’m sorry about that.
We went on and built up the Goose’s and everything got painted up finally.
That took a number of years. We were flying day and night especially
during the summer, watching the fish people. Finally toward the end of my
time there, we decided to build a Goose that would go a lot farther and do a
lot better job. That’s when we decided to build up N-780. I flew that for
about 2-1/2 years. It worked perfect!
Then OAS came in to be. I had enough time in so I left! (Applause)
Bob Richey
That’s a hard act to follow. Thanks, Theron. I have to admit that I feel
really humbled here in this group because I’m a new guy on the block.
These gentlemen have been around for many, many years. I know some of
their stories. I know some of the equipment.
23
I got my flying time out of San Diego (skip in tape) and picked that up at
_____________ Field out in Oklahoma. I had less than 200 hours when I
came up here. I came up in 1959. I hitch hiked on some diesel trucks up to
Seattle and watching those guys shifting gears, 15-fore, 5-speed main box,
3-speed brownie. I kept watching them and by the time I got to Seattle, I
could probably do it myself.
Then I flew up with PNA. PNA were flying Connies. I took the Goose (?;
shuttle?)on to Ketchikan and spent a couple days there and went into
Cordova and Anchorage. I caught the train and went to Fairbanks. I
checked with the University there for some additional training. I got out of
the Service. That’s when I started my training because we had 3 years to
pick something up on the GI-Bill. I figured that I already had one degree at
the time so I got my ticket – that was less than 200 hours.
I came up in 1960 to stay and then I didn’t use it for 5 years. I went to
school for another 3 years, got another degree at the University of Alaska
and was hired on for the summers. My summers then were at McKinley
Park. Some of you know the Eielson Visitor’s Center. I was there for 3
24
seasons. I headed for Kenai and was hired on as a wildlife aide and later on
as a biologist.
I didn’t start flying again. I hadn’t flown for 5 years. They were getting in a
bind there. They had Ave Thayer, and Will Troyer. They were getting in a
bind in 1965 so they sent me up to Anchorage to check with my first mentor,
Theron. He probably doesn’t remember this but he said, “alright, we’ll go
out.” He put me in a 185. I had started out in a Taylor Craft. I am still
amazed what a little 65 hp Taylor Craft would do. We were doing spins,
loops, etc. down in San Diego. Here we had this 185 and I probably didn’t
give Theron a very good ride. I spent 4-5 days with Theron in the 185’s and
180’s. He probably felt that I should settle back to a Cub.
About a month later I was trained on floats and I got checked out on floats
with Ray McNutt(??) there in Sterling. Then I went to Anchorage to get
checked out with Theron at Fish and Wildlife. I still remember, he took me
on the other side of the pond (Cook Inlet?) and he said, “Bob, pick out a lake
and let me see what you can do.” A little bit off the starboard corner I saw a
long lake and the wind looked like it was coming pretty much from the north
and that would be a straight in. I started to let down there and had it all
25
figured out as to what I was going to do. I was going to grease this on.
Theron said, “aw, just a minute, let me show you something. I’ve got the
controls.” He took over, and off to the right he goes and then he lands
crosswise in this narrow lake. He dropped it in over the grass and I
remember him pushing forward. He didn’t stub it but he sure stopped it. He
said, “this is what you can do on this stuff.” Here I had about a 2-mile lake
that I was going to land on. I’m sure he doesn’t remember that but I sure do.
I stayed in Kenai as most of you know, although they tried to ship me off
many times. The first time I was in the large hangar, across from the State
hangar, the Bureau of Land Management was in there with the Fish and
Wildlife Service. This was prior to OAS.
The BLM had some 180’s that they didn’t fly in the winter so we picked one
up for the Kenai. We flew wheel/skis in the winter and then went back to
floats on the Cub in the summer. I must admit Jerry and his crew is very
modest because they did, in those times, some tremendous modifications.
He gave us a wheel/ski Cub with oversize tires and special skis. When you
were on skis there was still about ¾ inch of tire so you had some control,
some brakes even on the ice. It was really beautiful.
26
A lot of modifications were done. We picked up the Borer prop on the first
plane that we had. We did a lot of, well experimenting. Kenai was so close
to Anchorage and we flew in to Anchorage frequently.
At that time, I was responsible for some oil and gas operations on the Kenai.
There were some Nodwell drilling sites that we had to get into and the only
way we could go in was to fly in on skis and at that particular time, they
were close to a figure “8” lake and I refused to go into it. I think I had 739
there which we had in Kenai for many, many years. At the time, the policy
was to change an engine every 1000 hours. I remember that particular plane,
we put in three different engines. I wouldn’t go into this lake even though I
had lots of hours in this plane.
I got into Anchorage and Jerry said, “let’s try out this new prop and see how
it works.” So Jerry put it on and I taxied out in Anchorage and it was just
phenomenal! I knew the bird well with the standard prop but it was
impressive. That late afternoon I went into this lake and checked on the
seismic crew and had no problem getting out of there. It was just really that
much difference.
27
They worked us a lot down there. They built up some beautiful wings on a
Cub years ago. It was too bad when OAS took over, because they took the
wings off. Unfortunately, we left the plane in Anchorage too long. I’m still
sick about that!
I had the opportunity to continue my training instruments and I kept on
working on my tickets in multi-engine and finally got checked out in the
Gooses and the Barons. I was fortunate enough to fly N-780, the turbine. I
was very fortunate to drive right seat on that.
--(end of tape #1) –
--(start of tape #2)—
28
Jim King
I was attending the University in Fairbanks in the late 1940’s. In 1951, I got
offered a job through the Dean’s Office to work for the Fish and Wildlife
Service for the summer. I didn’t have a summer plan so I decided that I
would do this. One thing lead to another and I wound up as a stream guard
in Kenai for the summer and that fall I went to a trainee position in
Fairbanks. I was working for an agent named Ray Woolford.
It was kind of interesting in a way, I never took a Civil Service Test. I
worked 34 years for the government and never took any of the tests that
people have to take nowadays.
In any event, we were doing a lot of winter trips out of Fairbanks and Ray
Woolford was a really capable pilot. The plane he used was an army surplus
L-1 Stinson, which was sort of a grand Super Cub. It had a 300-hp radial
engine but there were just two seats in it, fore and aft seats like a Cub.
Nobody had ski/wheels in those days. We had great big wooden skis with
metal sheathing under them and they didn’t turn very good. Backtaxiing
down the runway getting into position for take off, if you did it just right you
could blast the tail around and it would come around to a take off position.
29
If you didn’t do it just right then there were a number of things to do to get
that monster turned.
One of the things was to find a stick of wood and tie it under one ski so that
it would drag. The handiest thing, for the pilot, I quickly learned, was for
the passenger to get out and push on the tail while the pilot exercised the
engine. There would be clouds of snow and extra gear blowing away (very
refreshing at subzero temperatures). This was a great inducement for
becoming the pilot!
I started taking flying lessons in Fairbanks. I believe it was 1953 that I
checked out with Theron Smith. I had 100 hours in my logbook and was
authorized to do limited flying under the direction of Ray Woolford. I flew
until 1961 as a game management agent out of Fairbanks. I then went to
Bethel for a couple of years as refuge manager and then Hank Hansen, who
had developed the waterfowl project in Alaska, took a promotion to the
Nation’s Capitol.
I had been doing surveys. Part of our duties with the old management and
enforcement division was to do air surveys, duck banding, and things like
30
that. I got involved in waterfowl that way. After Hansen left I did the
waterfowl survey program for 20 years and used a variety of airplanes. I
flew government planes for 30 years.
One of the planes that I used for a number of years was the standard Beaver.
Those of you that have flown Beavers know it had three tanks in it plus two
wing-tip tanks. You had to switch tanks for the three fuselage tanks and if
you didn’t switch in time the fuel pressure would go down and a little red
light on the panel about as big as your little finger nail would go on and this
would tell you that you needed to switch.
Well, my job was to look out the window and look for ducks. Periodically, I
would miss this little light when it would go on because I was looking out
the window and the engine would quit. It would be a little nerve wracking at
100 feet. I think though, I had good advice in doing low-level surveys. One
of the things that we learned to do was do what we needed to do at cruise
speed. I always did that and I never did crash when the engine quit. I came
in one time and told Jerry Lawhorn about my problem with this little red
light. The next time I came back for my airplane, there was a light bulb on
the post there between the door and the windshield and that light was so
31
bright that even if I had my eyes shut I could feel the heat! It went off like a
bolt of lightning. I never let the engine quit again.
Another thing that bothered me was when I was flying in Southeast. You
could buy gas anywhere in Southeast on floats. You taxied up to a floating
dock. With the Beaver, to fill the wing-tip tanks, you had to climb up on top
and it could get pretty exciting. I was in Ketchikan one time and I was on
the outside wingtip filling the tank and a seine boat went by. The wing
started going up and down about 8 feet. I got one finger inside the gas filler
hole there trying to hang on and hold the hose with the other hand.
I complained to Jerry about the lack of things to hang on to on top of the
Beaver. So, when I came back, he had this neat little pair of goat horns
screwed into a couple of rings on the top. I thought that was pretty neat! I
flew a couple of trips with these goat horns on top. Then he decided that the
tail was fluttering or something, so they had to go. Those were a couple of
nice things that Lawhorn did for me.
Later on, I started flying the turbine Beaver. The first trip that I made with it
we were looking at a lot of the refuge areas or the areas that are now refuges.
32
We made about a 3-week trip from Tetlin all the way to Kotzebue looking at
what are now the refuges.
Jerry was in the back seat telling me how to run this thing because I didn’t
know anything about turbine engines and the fuel system was kind of
cranky. Anytime I had a question, I would just holler at Jerry. Later on, one
of the things about that airplane was that it was put together beautifully but
no one ever put an operator’s manual together on it that you could refer to
when you got worried about things.
I had a 7-digit operator’s manual which was Jerry Lawhorn’s phone number!
I considered that my security blanket. I never left home without it. I called
Jerry on weekends, at night, early in the morning and whenever something
happened that I didn’t understand. He seemed to always be there.
Another feature of the aircraft operation was I think they probably got
almost as many WWII radios as they did surplus engines. We had a radio
system that wouldn’t quit. I think there were l50 or so stations, in
automobiles, vessels, offices and in wives’ kitchens. Ray Tremblay’s wife
operated a radio from her kitchen for a number of years there in McGrath
33
and she talked to people in the air. I remember she would apologize if she
had to go out to the store or something and be off the air for a little while.
She took good care of us. Millie Pinkham at Tok was equally devoted.
At any rate, these radios really worked and most of the time, we could talk to
the hangar here in Anchorage from anywhere in Alaska. Sometime those
HF radios would get messed up with something – I don’t know – maybe
shooting stars or sunspots or something. The nice feature of that was there
again, for those of us that were specializing in other things besides flying, it
was nice to be able to call somebody when you had an airplane problem.
I think at least three times when I felt like I was in dire straights, I called up
and talked to Theron. One of the times, I was somewhere over the Yukon
Delta with the Beaver and it apparently swallowed a valve and the engine
started running really rough. I got over the Yukon River I didn’t want to be
over the Yukon – I wanted to be over the Kuskokwim and get back to
Bethel. After I got on the River, I called in and Theron answered. He was
in the air. We discussed what might be the problem with the plane. I don’t
remember where he was going but he monitored me all the way and I got
back to Bethel with the thing.
34
Another time, was with the first amphib-float plane that came to Alaska, a
180 Fish and Wildlife plane. It had some kind of electrical gadgetry in the
floats to bring the wheels up and down. It hadn’t been really perfected. It
needed tapping or kicking or something every now and then to get it to
work. Sometimes you couldn’t get the wheels up after take off so then you
would have to land on an airport and sometimes you couldn’t get the wheels
down so then you would have to look around for the nearest water. That
happened fairly regularly. So it often took an extra landing before you got
where you wanted to be. I never did figure out any way to kick these
switches in the air.
There was this one time out of Bethel that I got in the air and got the thing
stuck; one set of wheels up on one side and down on the other. That
happened right after I took off with a full load of gas. I got on the radio and
described my situation. I got hold of Smith and Lawhorn and we talked
about the problem. They got the books out and looked at the possibilities. I
remember the first thing they wanted to do was to make sure I knew which
side the wheels were down on and which side they were up because of the
mirrors on the wings that looked on the opposite side. We checked that out.
We decided to get rid of the fuel on the side that didn’t have any wheels.
35
I had to fly around for a couple hours while we hashed this over. I finally
landed on the runway there in Bethel. It really wasn’t a bad landing but the
thing was it was so neat when you had something like that happen, to be able
to contact the guys in the shop and they were always there. I don’t think
OAS has been able to duplicate that service.
There were other instances. One year I took off from Hughes in a Pacer. I
just got underway pretty good. It was cold (-40 Below). There was a pop
and the windshield split. I called up and talked to Smith again. He said,
“well, you ought to know there is some question about whether the airplane
will fly if the windshield comes out.” So, that was very comforting. I was
able to get back to Hughes.
Really, it was a neat relationship. I think those of us that were primarily
biologists or enforcement agents or whatever, we had other things to think
about besides the aviation thing. (My job description said I was a pilot
operating airplanes in remote areas but my performance evaluation never
said anything about the flying. We were evaluated on other things in
relation to other people who did not take on the responsibility of piloting.)
The old Aircraft Division gave us such really wonderful support. I think that
36
was something that was really gratifying in my career to be able to devote
time to other things and still have that support. (We didn’t have time to keep
up with aviation literature, we needed to keep up with wildlife literature).
Smith used to send articles around and little items for us to study. He just
kept us going. It is really neat to see Theron and Jerry Lawhorn here today
and everyone else. This was a grand period of time, going back to the
1950’s when we all operated together. Cal Lensink was part of that so I’ll
now turn the mike over to Cal.
Cal Lensink
Smitty checked me out in the 180. I was heading out to Bethel so I didn’t
need the airplane in the winter and then the next spring, my refresher course
was to fly to Nome and pick up an airplane. Smitty and I landed at Nome
and then got in the wheel airplane and flew back to Bethel. I landed at
Nome reasonably well and at Bethel reasonably well but progressively my
real flying deteriorated and I came very close to ground looping the 180 and
I don’t think I have ever been on wheels again since! It was strictly a float
operation out at Bethel.
37
In that area, summertime float flying was probably as safe a flying as you
could get in the world. There were no trees to run into to so if you could get
the plane off the water, you would really be home free. There is water
almost everywhere so even if an engine would quit you would be awfully
unlucky if you couldn’t plant it in the nearest pond.
I worked a deal to have another pilot or one of the mechanics fly the plane
out for me. I didn’t want to come into Anchorage to pick up an airplane. I
would bring it back in the fall if necessary. But in the spring, coming into
Anchorage, the weather was frequently bad and I could get stuck in
Anchorage for 2 weeks at a time.
Smitty came out with the plane one year and gave me my checkride. We
flew out to the coast and it was really nice weather. The water was calm and
I came in and landed at Old Chevak, just a little too hot. I barely touched it
down, really nice and smooth, it bounced and touched down again really
nice and smooth and finally on the third one, I got it stopped. Smitty’s only
comment was “three very good landings, I suggest you start working for
one.”
38
Of all the check pilots I was with, Smitty was probably the best because he
could make you feel comfortable in an airplane. For some reason or the
other, some of the check pilots would just make you uncomfortable and
uncertain. I always felt like Theron was able to put across what I had to do
and I was fine with his instructions. Actually, I was a very limited pilot in
that virtually all my flying was on the Yukon-Delta which I indicated was
really the safest, particularly in the summer time. I tried to avoid all
adventures in an airplane.
Tom Wardleigh
I got interested in aviation very early in life and was an apprentice mechanic
at Boeing Field for Pan American Airlines while I was going to high school.
During WWII, I was in the Navy as a mechanic. I went to work at Kenmore
Air Harbor immediately after WWII and learned to fly there. I feel pretty
privileged to know some great people. In the course of working there in the
State of Washington, they ran a Sea Bee up on a log in a night landing in a
river. In an effort to repair, through great good fortune, we had bought five
wrecked Seabees all in one pile after a windstorm.
We took a look at the State’s airplane and we made a reasonable bid to
restore it. It was pretty badly scrunched. We realized that if we cut it off at
39
the chine line and across the hull we had another tail that would just fit right
on there. We did that and by gosh the job turned out just way better than
anyone could have imagined. Instead of a month to repair it, we had it out in
about 4 days and instead of the bid amount we told the state pilot, that we’d
just bill him for the time and materials because it was about one tenth of
what we bid. Of course, he was pretty delighted.
I asked him what the chance was of getting a cushy job like he had, working
for a government entity instead of slaving away 7 days a week, 12 hours a
day like I was doing. He said, “there is a fellow in town that hires pilots
sometimes and I would suggest that you talk to him. His name is Clarence
Rhode.”
Well, I made an appointment and I met with Clarence. We had a discussion
in the middle of the night one night and the upshot was that I showed up
here in Anchorage and met Theron Smith and went to work in September
1951.
This was possibly the luckiest thing that ever happened to me in my whole
life because I learned a lot, had a lot of fun, met folks like Jim Branson. I
40
am telling you he is one of the most courageous people in the entire world.
He flew an awful lot with me in the Widgeon and neither one of us knew
how the trip would end.
It was a wonderful time because it was like family. If you went to McGrath,
you stayed with the folks in McGrath whether it was Lyman Reynoldson, or
Ray Tremblay or whomever might be there. If you went to Dillingham, you
stayed with a family in Dillingham. It was just like a great big extended
family.
Some of the happiest things that I can remember is having a Goose either
down on the Pacific side or in Cook Inlet and meeting the research vessel.
They would give you a garbage can of fresh caught king crab or a great big
halibut or a bunch of salmon. On the way home you would just call on the
radio and say, “hey, I’ve got food on board, let’s have a party.” All the folks
that worked in the hangar, the mechanics, secretaries and all would bring
their families and we would share a seafood dinner and everybody would
bring a dish of Jell-O or something. It was just a golden period in my life. I
look back on it just in awe that we could do so much with the few people
and such little money.
41
We always wondered what these biologists were thinking about. Jim
mentioned that they had other things to think about other than flying and
some of us in the aviation business wondered what in the world that might
be! One of the things they thought about was hauling canoes around for
duck banding and waterfowl work.
We had some creative mechanics in those days and they looked around at
the parts, pieces and miscellaneous that we had on hand. They took a Pacer
fuselage that was setting in the corner and took Super Cub wings and a tail
that happened to be lying around and some Mono-coupe floats that were off
of an expired Mono-coupe and somewhere came up with an Apache engine
and prop. They put this little menagerie together and it actually looked
pretty good. You could put two 17-ft Grumman canoes on it and fly them
anywhere you wanted to go. It just flew like a dream.
We had one of the field biologists/pilots in town and he wanted a float plane
rating. We got him going in this little creature. We called it a Sub-Cub.
Everything was great and it was a Sunday. This fellow wanted to get back
home with the airplane as soon as he could so I called up one of our really
42
good and understanding friends over at the PA, Dick Poit(??). He was the
office chief for the whole group. I said, “hey, Dick, any chance you can
come out on your day off and give a rating ride to a float plane pilot?” He
said he would be glad to and he came out and they took off from the dock
and went and flew and came back and tied up. It was the only airplane on
the whole waterfront at Lake Hood. Dick was just heaping praise on this
Pacer. He said “that’s the best flying little Pacer I have ever seen in my
life.” About that time, another Pacer came in and taxied up. I tried to wave
them off but wasn’t successful. Dick took one look at the long winged
airplane and the short winged airplane. One had a considerably more
impressive propeller than the other and he said, “you know, I think you have
done it to me again.”
We use to worry not nearly so much about conforming to rules as we did to
getting the job done. These folks have described that pretty well. If you
thought the equipment was good enough and you thought the weather
conditions were suitable, you just went ahead and did the work. That was a
wonderful way to operate. I think our directions from the Juneau Office,
speaking for Smitty and all of us, we got our budget and we got a Christmas
43
card and that was about it. If you didn’t break the iron and you didn’t have a
problem, you didn’t get much interference from the administrative side.
I remember the first week on the job, Elsie Hager was the head lady in those
days and she gave me a long narrow tablet. It had four colored pages in it
and you were to buy things with it. This was great. I could figure out how
to put in the vendor’s name and sign it.
We were having trouble with the Goose brakes. They were the old
automotive-style brakes that didn’t work worth a damn at best and they
worked even less than that when they were wet. This slick fellow came in
with 12 sets of Mallard brakes, cheap, at $1,000 a pair. So I wrote him a
Standard Form 44 for $12,000. The administrative office in those days was
in Portland and I don’t know how Frank Rigert ever did it but he was
standing by my desk with a scowl the next day. It seems the limit for me to
write a 44 was $500. After a lengthy discussion, he realized that my
responsibility was trying to maintain airplanes and that I didn’t have any
problem at all. His responsibility was paying the appropriate bill and he did
indeed have a problem!
44
In a few moments of your life you look back and you really reflect on certain
things and one of them was our magic Lear-T 30 radios where you let the
antennae out about 63 or 64 turns. It worked that particular day and the
voice on the other end was Dave Spencer. Dave had the Piper airplane of
sort. It had an open cowling. It didn’t have the closed later model Super
Cub type cowling. This particular airplane had the cylindars sticking right
out in the fresh air. He had been flying along down near Skilak Lake and the
engine ran more poorly and more poorly and he finally landed. He was
wondering if somebody could come and convince this engine that it ought to
run. Smitty said, “no problem, we’ll take the Gullwing and a couple of fire
pots and some tools and see what’s the matter.”
We went down and landed and taxied up right beside the Cub on this lake.
The Cub was sitting there, just like a duck on a pond, beautiful. It was just
colder than cold. It was like –30 degrees. After we got out of the Gullwing,
it kind of shuffled its shoulders and shuddered and sank in the over flow.
Now it is a little over knee deep in water and snow and it is rapidly
becoming a permanent part of the top of the Lake. I guess I’ll just let your
imagination picture this.
45
I put on a pair of snowshoes and Smitty stepped on behind me and the two
of us hiked over to a cabin on one pair of snowshoes. I didn’t have a clue
but Smitty knew what to do and gosh, in less than three days later we were
out of there! It was absolutely a wonderful learning experience.
Along the way I made friends with a fellow named Jack Jefford who worked
over at the CAA. I guess one of the ways that I made friends with him was
we had a lightly modified Pacer parked at the Beaver airport up on the
Yukon River and a requirement to bring it back to Anchorage and adjust its
attitude a little bit. I talked Jack into going in with the C-123 and loading
the Pacer and bringing it to town. He did all those things graciously. In
those days, the cooperation between agencies was just wonderful. He did it
without charging us anything. It was a good exercise for the airplane and on
and on.
In late 1958, we had been searching for Clarence Rhode who was missing.
All of us turned out who were working there at the time and all the airplanes
turned out and we really conducted the best search that we knew how to do.
46
We got back from the search without results, of course. I think you all
know that.
I got this strange phone call from a fellow, Jack Jefford at CAA. He said,
“Tom, those idiots in Washington have decided we can’t fly the DC-3 single
pilot any more and we got three DC-3’s and three pilots and that makes it a
little hard – could any of your guys come and be co-pilots for a little while?”
It was freeze up and we couldn’t fly floats, we couldn’t fly skis, kind of dull
days so I went over myself and Gene Stolz, and Emit Soldin went over and
we just filled in as co-pilots in the DC-3’s. At the end of a relatively brief
period, Jack sat on the corner of the desk and it was about time for me to go
back to work at Fish and Wildlife.
The Statehood Act had been signed by the President and nobody really knew
what the division of airplanes, facilities, and responsibilities would be
between the new state government and the existing Federal Fish and
Wildlife. Jack had a beguiling way about him. He sat on the corner of the
desk and he said, “you know, Tom, sign this piece of paper right here and
you will get a transfer in grade from the Department of the Interior to the
Department of Commerce and you get to hang your hat on that hat rack
47
instead of going back across the street.” That’s what I did. I never looked
back.
I just felt I had a wonderful family to go to and in fact I did go back and
Smitty was kind enough to loan us a Goose. Of all things, you just go and
borrow a Goose? From one agency to another? Well, yes, there were a
couple of Congressmen missing on a flight to Juneau – Begich and Boggs.
We borrowed a Goose and in a cooperative effort between the Fish and
Wildlife and the CAA, we did a part of the search. That didn’t work either
but we tried awfully hard.
In any case, I transferred to the CAA which ultimately became the FAA but
I never felt that my family thought I was gone. I always could go back over
and was warmly welcomed and it was just a wonderful time in my life, a
wonderful opportunity to learn from people.
Ray Woolford was mentioned earlier. Ray was a great pilot. I worked with
Ray –break in tape here – end of Tom’s presentation.
48
John Sarvis
The next person would be Dave Spencer but Dave’s health is poor right now
but maybe there are people here that could refer to Dave and the flying that
he did. Dick Hensel, can we start with you?
Dick Hensel
I may begin this discussion but I think most everyone here could better
speak to the subject of one Mr. Dave Spencer. Dave would have liked to be
here this afternoon and he hinted earlier that his presence would be possible,
but his wife, Eloise, telephoned me this morning with word that he just
wasn’t up to it because of his deteriorating health.
By way of background, Dave graduated from Penn State with a degree in
Forestry in the late 1930's. The advent of WWII had him enlisting in the
US Navy wherein he soon became a flight instructor training young pilots to
fly PBY’s. Dave returned to the temporary job he had with the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service before the war and was later assigned, full time to a
refuge down in Florida. His primary responsibilitywas to follow and
inventory migratory waterfowl from the Canadian Provinces southward into
Central America. In this he excelled.
49
Theron mentioned earlier his love for the Widgeon amphib and this same
love was shared equally by Dave Spencer. A remarkable story that comes to
mind concerns the time Dave was instructed to pick up a surplus Widgeon at
a Tulsa, Oklahoma airport where it had been overhauled and modified for
Service use. He and a colleague, who may have been the Aircraft Director
from the Washington Office at the time, I can’t recall, began to taxi at a
pretty good clip, when they had a hell of a time keeping the aircraft aligned
with the median. Words were exclaimed to the effect this plane wasn’t
ready for this X Navy pilot to fly so the plane was quickly parked and shut
down. In the process of the overhaul, mechanics inadvertently criss-crossed
the rudder peddle cables.
To go on, Dave served as a flyway biologist until around 1948 and at that
point, Clark Salyer the Service’s Director, asked Dave to fly the same
Widgeon, Number 703, which incidentally, I think is presently graveyarded
someplace in King Salmon, to Anchorage. And situate himself in Kenai as
the first Manager of the Kenai National Moose Range. At that time,
poaching, mostly by miners, was added reason to station Dave at this
location. And so, he along with his new bride Eloise, settled in Kenai and
began keeping house so to speak in a small uninsulated cabin with a single
50
barrel stove as the only source of heat. As Dave tells the story, he spent
most of his first winter there on the Kenai cutting firewood. At the time
there was no highway connecting Anchorage or Seward but this soon
became a reality along with Clark SalyerDAve’s becoming elevated to the
Refuge Supervisor for all of Alaska’s federal refuge units.
I’d like to pass this mike to others because much of the classical work that
Dave did in the early 1950’s, well before my time, was certainly precedent
setting, as for example, the development of waterfowl sampling methods.
Jim King can best elaborate on this aspect of Daves career.
Jim King
One of the things about Dave Spencer was that he wasn’t known for
verbosity. In fact, we called him “silent Dave.” It wasn’t until not long ago,
it sort of emerged out of the woodwork that Dave was the key in designing
the Continental Waterfowl Survey program that depends on their aerial
transects, that have now been done clear across North America for 50 years
or more. Dave, whose degree in college was in forestry, was one of the
people assigned to the Prairies when they were first starting to figure out
how to do these transect counts.
51
They had established transects but it was Dave with his forestry training that
knew how to do a little bit of statistics so that he could segment the transects
and analyze them as a simple random sample. That system which he
devised in about 1947 or 1948 has stood the test of time now for 50 years
and we still do it every year. The statisticians will never agree that that was
the correct use of random sampling because the transects aren’t random.
They are drawn so they are easy to fly but regardless, that’s the information
by which we have been managing ducks now for half a century. I think the
system works because we have about as many ducks now as we did in the
1950’s when the whole thing was first put together.
Dave has been an important person. He started aerial muskox surveys after
he got here. He started moose surveys with the airplane. Perhaps more
important than that was Dave had been a student of Aldo Leopold which he
never talked about very much but he knew him well and had spent time in
the shack where Leopold wrote his books. He worked with Olaus Murie in
the Rockies and he went to college with the Craighead brothers.
When Dave came to Alaska, people were trying to think of how to get some
pulp mills going so they could take advantage of all the trees that were just
52
going to waste and how to dam up the rivers and get some electricity. The
politicians were trying to get rid of the Kenai Moose Range so that
homesteaders could use it. To a very real extent, I think that the background
that Dave had when he came, was responsible for people starting to think
about additional refuges and wilderness areas and protection of the wild
areas.
He really influenced the way Alaska is today and while doing this, he put
together a superlative team of refuge managers. Dick Hensel is one. Then
when the mood swung a little toward developing more refuges in Alaska,
Dave trained refuge managers. We were the ones that knew where these
new refuges ought to be and the refuge managers put together a 60 million-acre
package of waterfowl refuges that President Jimmy Carter gets the
credit for establishing in 1980. (Dave Spencer had us ready for this).
I thought maybe I would mention Hank Hansen and Chuck Evans as a
couple of the old timers that I talked to in the last year. The Regional Office
has me doing some oral history interviews with some of the old timers. Last
winter I was going to be in the state of Washington and I called up Hank
Hansen and made arrangements to get together with him on a certain date in
53
January. I wanted to try and record some of his memories about when he
came to Alaska in the mid 1950’s and set up the waterfowl program which
really hasn’t been modified a whole lot. It is one of the programs that has
more continuity than practically anything that the Service does.
Hank invited me to come and stay with them. They live in Oak Harbor,
Washington. A few days before it was time to go, I thought I would call up
and just confirm the time that I was going to get there. I had trouble getting
through on the telephone and when I finally did get through, I found out that
Hank had just had a triple by-pass heart operation but his wife, Doris, told
me to come on that they wanted me there. So, five days after he had a triple
by-pass, Hank Hansen gave me his memories of setting up the waterfowl
transects in Alaska. He is doing pretty good now. He also has diabetes and,
so far, is conquering his health problems. I talk to him on the phone every
now and then. He is interested in what’s going on up here.
Another person that I talked to down there was Chuck Evans who is retired
in Lacy, Washington. He spent a lot of time on the Rampart Dam studies
and did a lot of flying on that. Chuck was one of the pilots that flew
airplanes in China before WWII over the Himalaya’s, high altitude freight
54
hauling, etc. He said he was writing up his memories of that. Chuck spent
quite a few years here and is now retired and doing fine.
55
Dick Hensel
Two thoughts in this regard, one in reference to Bob Burkholder and
another, Will Troyer. It would be more appropriate for Ray Tremblay to
talk about Burkholder as he was directly involved in a bizarre mishap
concerning aerial hunting of predator wolves. Will Troyer seasonally now
resides in Arizona and lives in Cooper Landing during the summer and fall
he enjoys his favorite pass time hunting Ptarmigan and grouse. I had the
profound pleasure, and you might say, the agony, of working with Will at
Kodiak and later in Anchorage from where he directed the wilderness land
classification studies for Alaska Wildlife Refuges during the 1970's. Will
went on to transfer to the National Park Service, and continued as a pilot
even after severely crashing a Supercub at the Denali Park landing strip from
becoming cought in a wicked downdraft. More to the point, this incident
relates to the time Will gave me my first flying lesson in Kodiak when at the
time I think he had only something like 50 hours or so of flying time. We
sorely wanted to get into the flying business and decided to organize a local
flying club which led to the purchase and joint ownership of a float equipped
T-Craft, an ideal machine to learn how to fly.
56
It didn’t have a starter and had to be propped by hand. My debut as a most
naive student began when he flew solo from Long Lake, where the plane
was moored at the municipal float pond, to the city boat harbor where he
was to pick me up one evening after work. After landing in an ourtside
channel and taxiing to a wooden ramp provided for the float planes inside
the harbor, he exited the plane and we pulled it high onto the ramp, which
was real slick and slippery with algae. His instruction was for me to access
the prop by way of the right float while he occupied the left side seat and
then, when the engine fired, I was to quickly enter and seat myself by his
side. Following through, I attempted to prop the engine only to have the
plane slip off the ramp into the water. I returned to the rear and pulled the
plane back onto the ramp then went forward and made another attempt to
start the plane to no avail. Observing these antics, uttering some remarks,
then getting out of the plane he asked that I hold the tail to keep the plane
stationary while he propped the engine and, upon starting I was to quickly
make my way via the left float into the aircraft.
(Original from recording--- I got hold of the tail of the plane, he walks out
on the end of the float, props it, it slides off the ramp, the plane is going, I’m
riding the float, I get in and Troyer is not there! I look out the window and
57
he is swimming. He is swimming towards the ramp. I thought, “oh my
God, what am I going to do.” I didn’t know anything about flying the plane.
I pushed in the throttle. Here was this T-Craft splashing across the boat
harbor with all these fishermen leaning over the rail wondering what in the
hell was going on. Finally I got the thing stopped. I climbed out onto the
float and here is Will just getting out of the water. I said, “well, Will, what
do I do next?” He said, “paddle the plane back here.” So I paddled and
paddled and got the thing turned around and he said “o.k., that’s your first
lesson. I’m going to go get some dry cloths on and I’ll come back and give
you a second lesson.” )
What happened next is that the engine started, I entered the aircraft now
moving at above idle power, while Will fell off the float into the boat harbor.
While he was swimming ashore I was frantically trying to stop the aircraft
and being totally unfamiliar with procedures I pushed the throttle inward
rather than out and the plane abruptly accelerated. Luckily I stopped the
engine after striking the master switch then stepped onto the float about the
time Will sttod erect, wringing wet, on the ramp. I proceeded to paddle
ashorte while at the time commotion attracted a number of fisherman
spectators peering from seiners moored nearby, and who no doubt were
58
wondering what these clowns would be doijng next. Upon getting situated
once again upon the ramp, I recall Will remarking “OK, I’ll take the truck,
go home and change my clothes, come back and give you your second
lesson”.
Now Tremblay may want to relate the story with Bob Burkholder having to
do with an aerial wolf hunt.
Ray Tremblay
Which wolf hunt? There were about six or seven of them!
Do any of you know Burkholder? Have you heard of him? You got to
understand that this guy had a mission and his mission was to kill wolves
and nothing else mattered. The airplane was a tool to accomplish this. I was
in McGrath and he would come over because we had wolf problems there.
Normally in any of our wolf operations, these were all Fish and Wildlife
guys. We did shoot wolves in those days to get rid of them. Normally I did
the flying and had the shooter do the shooting. With Burkholder, he made
me the shooter and he did the flying.
59
It was an adventure. The only time that the needle and the ball (instruments
that line up in smooth flying) were together was when they were passing
each other! He could track wolves like no other person. He would get on a
wolf track and he would follow that thing through caribou tracks and every
thing else until he would find that wolf. It was about 40 degrees below zero
and we were out chasing wolves. We finally found this wolf and he said,
“kill it.”
Normally we would shoot out the right window but we decided it was easier
to shoot out the left window. It did work pretty good. So, I gave it a try.
We had a 12-guage model 12 pump. We were careful to never put the shell
in the chamber until we had the muzzle out the side of the window. I put the
muzzle out the window and I could not feed a shell into the chamber. It just
wouldn’t go. It is 40 below zero and the thing was all froze up.
Burkholder was going crazy because we can’t get this wolf killed. Finally I
told him what had happened and he said, “well, feed in one shell at a time.”
So I took a shell and I put it in there and at this time, I had to bring it inside
the plane to do this because my hands were all frozen. I pulled the gun
inside and I put the shell in and I slid it forward and it went off. I did have it
60
pointed out. I want to tell you that three of the pellets – one hit the ball dead
center! This thing went off in his ear. No ear phones on. Now he is livid!
We landed. He said, “you don’t know anything about a shot gun, let me
show you.” I said, “Bob, it is frozen.” It was frozen with the firing pin
sticking out. That is what happened. When I slid it forward, it jammed it
and it set it off.
We tried thawing it out but we could never get it thawed out. He said, “we
got to get that wolf!” We went up again and I actually shot that by putting
the shell in the chamber and as we came over the wolf, I would slide the
thing forward and we got the wolf! Now that is dedication.
--(end of Tape #2)—
--(start of Tape #3)--
61
Tom Wardleigh
We had a Cub that had been involved in a problem and it was up at Gulkana
on a flat bed truck. I asked Burkholder if he would be willing to drive the
truck back down if we flew him up. He indicated that he would be willing to
do that so we piled him in a Pacer and flew him to Gulkana. He jumped in
the flat bed and there was a whole Cub wing, fuselage, motor, the whole
thing on the back of the flat bed.
He got the flat bed started up and vigorously backed it in to a snow bank and
took off at high speed down the road for Anchorage. Well, when he backed
it up, he kinked the tail pipe which broke the exhaust pipe up by the muffler.
As he was driving down the road, the heat got the flat bed on fire but he is
making 65 toward Anchorage with the Cub burning off the truck. He got a
hat trick in one day.
62
John Sarvis
I will tell a Will Troyer/Dick Hensel story. It’s just a little different than
flying but I kind of relate to these guys. They were doing bear studies on
Kodiak Island and at that time we weren’t using helicopters. They had these
padded traps. They would go and set these traps out and they would trap a
bear occasionally. They would then tranquilize the bears and the way they
did this was they had a tranquilizer on the end of a jab pole. After they had
the bear in the trap, they would walk up and jab the bear and tranquilize it.
One day they were out checking their traps – this is how I heard the story
now – and sure enough there was a bear and they go up to jab the bear.
They sneak up there, jab the bear in the butt with their stick and low and
behold the bear jumps up and runs off and they look around and there is
another bear that is in the trap!
Another one I want to tell is when I first met both Jim King and Cal Lensink
in 1971. I had gone to work for the Fish and Wildlife Service in
Washington, D.C. I eventually realized my mistake so I got farther west. I
was working in a branch of the Wilderness Studies. This was the time they
were starting to consider establishing more refuges and parks, etc. in Alaska.
63
Jim and Cal were in D.C. They were there to testify about establishing these
lands. What they were saying earlier about Dave Spencer, also applies to
these two and I hold a lot of gratitude for the work they did.
There were people that wanted to establish refuges but these guys knew,
from flying all over the state for many years, where the good waterfowl
places were, and where the wildlife places were. Anytime you actually put
lines on a map and figure out the sizes and shapes of these places, these two
guys were in Washington doing a lot of work on that. Most of the people in
Washington had no idea about Alaska and where the wildlife and waterfowl
were. Jim and Cal had a lot to do with these selections for establishment of
refuges, parks, etc.
Terry Smith
I was in a unique position to watch literally hundreds of check rides and
advice sessions, you might say. It was interesting to watch procedures that
are used to this day molded and changed to fit the concept of the low level
survey work and the wildlife management that went on. You knew that this
was the conceptual stage of some of this because it continued to change.
64
As folks came in, they would get in a 180 or a Widgeon or a Goose and head
off and go do their thing.
The low-level work and the ground reference maneuvering that took place
was not very well conceptualized at that point. There hadn’t been a lot of it
done. The military had done a lot of things with target focus and things like
that but low level light airplane work across the country was a normal thing
to do. You would watch as the training took place and having the airplane
stabilize when you would go by something.
Dad, Ray and Tom, they would all work to make this as safe and it could
possibly be done. One of the things that came out of that, of course, is
something that is a benchmark today, especially if you are secondarily listed
in the aviation aspect of what you are doing right now.
The Bob Burkholder syndrome of what’s on the ground is all important as
long as the airplane stays together long enough for you to get to it or get it.
That’s the case. Your job is not necessarily as a professional pilot flying the
airplane. Things like a stabilized airplane for any type of a visual pass, you
don’t have the airplane decelerating and changing configurations coming up
on a kill or the dead animal that you are looking at. You have the airplane
65
stabilized just short of that so when you go by it, everything stays the same.
You got 20 inches on the 185 and you are set up. That way it is not
Christmas when two seconds later you are done with your viewing and you
look back inside and wholly cats!! – there is no airspeed, there is no nothing
and it’s faced uphill.
It was very interesting to grow up during a period where a lot of those things
were being tested, changed just slightly, and made into the very core of what
we use today in low level survey work.
One time after a long, long day on a marine mammal study on a sea otter
survey, one of the observers in the back made some comment about he
didn’t realize you could fly an airplane that low that long. Dad’s response
was “yes, you can fly an airplane real close to the ground for a long period
of time as long as you stay parallel.”
Ray Tremblay
I want to tell one more here on my good friend, Theron.
We did a lot of flying together all over. This guy taught me a lot. He taught
me on instrument flying – don’t only look at your instrument chart but when
66
you are making an approach, have your VFR chart there so you know where
the hills are and you are not just making this blind approach into something
especially when you are going in for the first time.
We made sea otter surveys out at Amchitka, and walrus surveys between
Nome and the Russian coast. I remember this particular time, I was doing
the flying and he was doing the navigating and the biologists were doing the
counting of the walrus and we were flying at 500 feet going between the
Alaska coast and the Russian coast. We had been advised not to get too
close to the Russian coast because we didn’t have any authority.
So, Theron is doing all this navigating, doing this for 6, 7, 8, 9 hours and
trying to keep an idea of where we are over this open water and some ice
and whatever. He was doing a pretty good job. We didn’t have GPS’s and
all that good stuff. We were doing this flying at 300 feet and then we started
getting into fog. We didn’t want to pull up at that point because we were
near the end of the survey.
We still had some surveying to do so we stayed under the fog as long as we
could. Then Theron said turn north now and fly for so long and I did. Then
67
he told me to turn east again and we will start in that direction. So going
along, not only in the fog but we’re at 300 feet and pretty soon, we are over
land and we are flying over some kind of a town or a village and there are
people down there and then we realized we were over the Russian coast!
Theron told me to just keep flying straight because we don’t want to make
like that we are doing something that we shouldn’t be doing here. We were
flying along and we had three biologists. Pretty soon, here was a MIG right
along side of us. Theron said, “now just keep flying, don’t pay any attention
to it.” This MIG would come out from behind then it would disappear then
come right along top of us and then it would just make this turn and
disappear again.
We kept looking at the international signals. If he wags a wing this means
we got foul or he is not responsible for our safety or whatever it was. Now,
of course, we are starting to take pictures of this. We got some great MIG
pictures. This last past, whatever he did, he came around and he came right
across the front of us. He had everything hanging down. He had his brakes
down, his flaps, his wheels, and all. He was just practically stalling. I
remember my first thought was that he was such a little guy. I thought they
68
were supposed to be big. Just his head poking up and now he is taking
pictures of us.
We had Red Dodge’s DC-3 and it had this painting of this naked girl on the
side of it that said “Hello Dolly.” That’s what he was taking pictures of!
When he went by us, we were at 200 feet. He finally decided that he had
better start flying and he poured the coals to that thing and he went right
down almost into the water. Water was actually spraying from behind this
MIG when he was trying to get his air speed enough to fly away. Theron
and I both said, “man, if he goes into the water, we’re both in deep yogurt.”
Anyway, we made it.
Theron is a wealth of knowledge. One of the things that you got to have in
your flying career is a guy like Theron and a guy like Tom. I know that
Tom, making me do it, says, “let’s go out and do a check ride.” To me, a
check ride should be more than just going up and doing a few stalls and
doing a few turns, etc. What Tom and Theron did was get out and have you
do what you do in your operation and let them see how you do it.
69
Tom took me out and wanted me to show him how I did a wildlife survey,
following a trapline trail. I told him that I would get about 500 feet. He
told me to do that then he said, “why don’t you slow it down until you think
the thing is going to stall and then fly.” So I did that and then he said, “now
start making a turn and do the same thing, that is, get it to just where you
think it is going to stall and recover.” I did that. Finally he said, “do you
really think it is safe practicing stalls at 500 feet?” I said, “hell no, I don’t
like it at all!” He said, “then why in the hell are you doing it?” I said,
“cause you told me to!” He said, “look, when you are the pilot in command,
if you don’t feel like doing something, don’t do it!” Theron was the same
way.
Theron Smith
All those last years, most of my stories have gone away. My son, Terry, was
3 years. I remember one time when he was about 4 years, I had a Goose up
on a lake and was getting some stuff out of it and had the engine running and
he was sitting along side of me and I heard the engine roar up a little bit. I
looked around and he is standing up in the chair, pulling on the power.
70
When he was a young kid, he couldn’t look out the windshield. There were
quite a few times that there were just the two of us coming home in the dark.
He learned to fly instruments looking ahead without looking over the
window because he couldn’t see out the window. He could fly the thing fine
and tell me where to turn, he would know where to turn. He learned to fly
pretty good.
Terry Smith
One of the things that amazes me about the operation as it went on in the
50’s and the 60’s was that the training was focused on what the
biologist/pilot was doing; just exactly what you are doing.
I think the practical test guides started showing stall recovery out of a turn to
return to maintain the radius. In other words, the check rides that I watched
in the early 50’s, was in turning a stall. The recovery was made turning
again. There was certainly no sense in learning to fly and recovering out of
a stall in a turn by rolling the wings level when the whole reason that you
were turning was because of terrain. That was the reason that you were
stalling as you were turning probably after a pass or in the arena of wildlife
surveying where you had been slowing and started to turn inside of terrain
71
confines. As soon as you started to turn, of course, the thing starts to
shudder a bit. You know you are either going to stall or run into a tree.
I guess it was enlightening or amazing to me as I started to take private pilot
training that all those turning stalls were recovered to wing level or nose
down. After 15 years of watching people recover rolling back into the turn
holding altitude, it is amazing that we don’t have more responsive training in
the general aviation arena. You are very fortunate to have the kind of
training and the kind of check rides that you get. When you identify
something that is not being trained the way that you fly the airplane, then it
should obviously change because you fly the way you are trained. You are
supposed to fly like you’re trained and train like you fly. So when you find
something that doesn’t fit your operation, then get the training changed so
that it does. It doesn’t serve any purpose to be trained in something that you
are not going to do in real life.
72
Theron Smith
I would like to talk about the future of the people that I trained for many
years. The thing was some of these people had very few hours but we never
lost one and we never had a problem. We trained them well enough so that
the pilot knew what he was doing even if he didn’t have more than 50 hours.
You could teach a person so he would not get tangled up and kill himself.
He might bust up the airplane but not kill himself. I just wanted to say that.
Ray Tremblay
We talked about pushers on the airplane. I flew the Gullwing a lot and we
would have to have somebody in the back to push the tail around. So, we
had the blasters and the pushers and that’s what Jim was saying, “it was
always better to be the blaster than the pusher.”
I remember when Clarence Rhode, God bless him, decided we all had to
have uniforms. Then Clarence decided that all the pilots were going to have
to have a set of wings, which we didn’t care too much for but that’s what he
decided. Sig Olson was one of the biologist at the time and one of our
famous pushers. He told Clarence that if he required the pilots to have
wings, then the pushers should have recognition also. He told Clarence that
73
he wanted a pair of cross show-shoes on the sleeve and then a hash mark
would be given every time you got run over by a tail.
John Sarvis
I would like to mention one or two other names that come to mind before we
give the audience a chance to ask questions. Jay Hammond was an early
Fish and Wildlife pilot. Does anyone want to tell a “Jay Hammond” story?
Tom Wardleigh
The first winter I was here, I was working late one Sunday night. We were
getting the Gull Wing on skis. This thing had a double bungee, about the
size of my thumb and it was getting along toward 11:00 o’clock in the
evening, not a soul around. I found that with maximum effort I could hit the
little clevit up over the clamp with a clip on the fuselage. I was trying to
hook up this bungee, using both hands but when I would take one hand off
to put the bolt through the hole, I could not make it. It would slip back just
enough that I couldn’t do it. I would brace my elbow on my knee and was
just using all I had and was just desperate to get this damn thing done and go
home.
74
Out of nowhere, no sound, no door open or close, this big hairy hand came
down and grabbed the bungee and said, “why don’t you put the bolt in, son.”
That was the first time I ever met Jay Hammond.
We were tired and I was dirty. It was Sunday night and we decided to go get
a hamburger. We got in my car and drove around and we came to this little
Quonset hut, Garden of Eatin, it said. We went in and there were white table
napkins and just a beautiful restaurant inside this Quonset hut. I started to
excuse myself. I told the lady that we were just looking to get a hamburger
and that I was sorry to bother. She said, “sit down, we’ll make you a
hamburger.” One of my first meals I had in the City of Anchorage was at
the Garden of Eaten with Jay Hammond in my dirty old work cloths, almost
midnight on a Sunday night.
Ray Tremblay
You must read his book to appreciate some of the things that he did. I
remember the time he landed on skis down south of Cold Bay and he broke
both ankles. Jay is really crippled up badly. It is a shame to see him that
way, physically. If you see him or get a chance to write to him, give him a
“hello.” The last I heard, he went on a pheasant hunt with Jim Reardon.
75
Jim Branson
Jay is getting pretty badly crippled up and on this particular hunt, we had a
stool and we would set him up on one corner where the drive was going to
be. He could swing pretty good to the left as long as he could lean back on
the stool. He did pretty good. He is still a good shot.
John Sarvis
Another person is Gordy Watson. Gordy was the Area Director for quite a
while and did a fair amount of flying too.
76
Ray Tremblay
Yes, we just had a surprise birthday party for Gordy this past Saturday night
on his 75th birthday. As you know, Gordy was a biologist up here and then
became the Area Director and did a lot of flying. He was involved in one
serious wreck when we were looking for Clarence Rhode the second
summer when he was out there at Mt. Michelson. That accident is one that
we talk about. I talked about it with the pilots with the State and that is
going up into a canyon and then making a down wind turn and
unfortunately, that is what he did. He and Don Thurston spent 5-6 days up
there before they were found. He is doing fine. He is living in Girdwood
and he is still teaching skiing. He is leaving early tomorrow morning for
Hawaii.
John Sarvis
Let’s have a few questions from the audience.
Can someone address Bob Baker?
77
Jim King
Bob Baker was a predator/rodent control agent in Kotzebue for a number of
years and then he got tired of that and established Baker Aviation in
Kotzebue. One of the things that I remember was when he was still working
for the Service, he lived in this very small little house. It had a little porch
on it and on the roof of this porch, he had this pet raven that he was feeding.
We went by one day and Bob had decided that he didn’t like the
neighborhood that he was living in and he had his house hooked onto a
caterpillar. There were some skids under it (the house). He was towing it
down the road, moving it to a new location and here’s this raven sitting on
top of the porch roof like he was in command.
Question for Tom Wardleigh: How did the Mountain Goats get to Kodiak?
Tom Wardleigh
78
The goats got to Kodiak a few at a time and very, very carefully. There was
one person producing goats right at the head of Eagle River here. He would
trap them and give a call that we needed to come get the goats. My second
flight for the Fish and Wildlife Service was to take a brand new Pacer to the
head of Eagle River and pick up three Mountain Goats and bring them to
Anchorage. This guy was some sort of a character but he really knew how to
trap goats.
One day he called in and said he had some. We went up and he was sitting
on a rock with his chin in his hands looking very disgusted and a little bit
angry. He had been leading the goats across the creek. He had them on
leashes, and he stumbled and fell and there were three goats running around
with leashes, all of them wondering what to do next but none of them were
ready to get in the Pacer and come to town.
We would compound them in the hangar then haul them over to Uyak Bay
and put them off on the beach, all except one. That one, Dave Spencer, just
happened to be flying over Crescent Lake down on the Kenai and there was
a goat swimming across the lake so Dave landed. He did the proper
79
interview with a new employee that was sitting beside him and wrestled the
goat into the Widgeon and they wound up in Kodiak.
I guess under Mike’s tender care, there are now many goats, distributed from
one end of the island to the other and some limited amount of hunting for
them. They were, by the way, delightful creatures, as far I knew. We had
one big old billy goat but we didn’t want to make the trip all the way down
just for one goat. He became kind of the mascot. We had a small surplus
tug that we moved the airplanes around the hangar with and in the morning
you would come to work and here would be the goat standing up on the
hood of the tug just waiting for someone to come scratch his head between
his horns. It was really a pleasant animal and a delight to be around.
We finally hauled him down to Kodiak. As far as I know, the goat
transplant was one of the really successful things that took place.
Another fellow named Roger Allen. He was a sport fishery biologist. He
thought it would be nice to have some Grayling on the Kenai. There was
some preparation involved in making a still so long and so big around. We
fixed one of the Widgeons to capture the outlet air from a vacuum pump, put
80
it through an oil separator, run it down the still that was mounted on top of
the Widgeon, put the tube in through the little ventilator on top of the cabin
roof. You could stack milk cans full of fish and run the pump on one engine
and keep them oxygenated. We took a beach seine up to Lila Lake and
seined up some Grayling, put them into these water cans and loaded them in
the Widgeon. We would fly them down there to a lake and I was really
amazed because Roger was very thorough. He didn’t just pour the fish in
the water which I thought was what would happen. He put the can in the
lake until the temperatures stabilized and tipped the cans a little bit into the
water so the water exchange could take place between the can and the water.
Finally he laid the can down and every one of those Grayling immediately
went into the wheel well of the Widgeon that was on the beach. I guess they
wanted the shade; wanted to get out of the bright sunlight.
The transplant was one of the very successful ones and I understand the
Grayling fishing on the Kenai is very good. It makes you feel like that some
of that work was really worth while in the long term.
81
Question: Tom, can you tell us the story about the mechanic that ended the
engine failure problem? You told us about him when you were sitting in the
Beaver last summer.
Terry Smith
That’s the kind of thing that went on. Tom was heading up the maintenance
end and between Tom and Jerry and people like Vern, they just didn’t let
system failures or consistent failures continue. You just made a better part.
82
Tom Wardleigh
I guess I’m disconnected from that particular story. I do vividly remember
though an education in economics and integrity that we learned when we
first got the super Widgeons. We took the Widgeons down to the Portland
area and had Lycoming engines put on in place of the Rangers. On about
the first or second take off, one of them had a major failure. The little stud
that sticks out on the magneto to interrupt the rotations for the impulse
coupling, in order to start the engine more readily, broke and went down
between the crank shaft gear and the cam shaft gear which effectively split
the crank case. This just made a total ruin out of the engine. The series of
events were relayed to Lycoming. I think we had just bought 15 or 16 of
those engines, enough to put in 7 Widgeons and have a spare.
Lycoming disclaimed any responsibility because it was a Bendix magneto.
So we contacted Bendix and they were just as good as gold. They sent us a
brand new stud! (laughter)
Clayton Jenson came over to work at Fish and Wildlife, about the same time
that Lawhorn did, I think. We had a host of folks that came in all looking
for work on a day when we needed some folks. Clayton was a man whose
83
face showed a lot of mileage. He was a very quite fellow and I remember
interviewing him. I asked him if he could do sheet metal work and he said,
“yes.” I asked him how he was on fabric work and if he liked to do fabric
work. He said, “well, I can do it.” He had no enthusiasm about anything.
Vern Bookwallyer(??) was the overhaul man at that time and Vern, who was
about 70 years old, thought he would go homestead before he got old. He
resigned and went down on the Kenai. I was a little concerned on who was
going to do engine over haul. Clayton quietly came over one evening after
work. Everyone else had gone home. He said, “Tom, if you haven’t
promised the engine shop to somebody, I would really like to take a chance
at that.”
We had spare engines needing overhaul of every shape and form and
description. We had a lot of different airplanes in those days. I don’t
believe we had a spare made up for anything – not the Goose, not the
Widgeon, not the Gullwing, the Pacers or the Super Cubs. We had engines
waiting for overhauls.
In less than a year, we had spare engines for everything, ready to put into
airplanes. The piles of stuff had been sorted; the tools were all in order.
84
Clayton was one of the most effective and most pleasant men that I have
ever worked with. I had written up Clayton for an award for superior
performance in his job and sent it to Juneau.
One of our illustrious pilots had properly drained the oil from a Super Cub
one cold winter day and the next morning, forgot to put the oil in, took off
and flew up quite a ways and the engine failed. Well, because we had an
engine failure on one of Clayton’s overhauled engines, his award was denied
and I still bitterly regret that. He had a heroic performance working for the
Fish and Wildlife for a very modest wage. He just out performed anything I
had ever seen in the area of dedication to the job. That was one of the
saddest days of my life when his award was denied.
John Sarvis
We will stop now for lunch and those of you who want to rejoin us after
lunch are welcome to resume some of the stories.
85
Ray Tremblay
I have a story with a moral, I guess. One of the things we teach off airport
take offs and landings is when you get ready to take off, you go ahead and
you walk the gravel bar out very carefully, and you mark your spot. Usually
you select a spot that says this is where I am going to take and if I don’t get
off at this spot I’ve got enough room left so that I can stop the airplane.
I went on a moose hunt with a friend one time in his airplane. There were
three of us. It was over in the King Salmon area. It was back in the years
when you could locate, land, shoot. It was legal. We flew around and we
spotted a nice cow moose and we landed in pretty much tundra type terrain.
It was a beautiful day and after we got through butchering the animal, I said,
“I’ll pack this thing down on the gravel bar for take off.” He said, “no, no, I
can take off right here.”
It was his airplane, with big tires and he said he was going to take the plane
off from right there where we were. He did everything right – he walked it
all out, he took the seats out and he put it at this spot and he said, “now this
is where I should be flying.” Then he put some other seats in a different spot
and he said, “now here, if I am not flying at this spot, this is where I chop it
86
and I’ve got enough roll-out left that I don’t have a problem with the
airplane.”
I thought, “man, this guy is really good, he knows what he is doing!” So, we
loaded half the moose in the airplane and the other fellow and I stood at the
halfway point and watched this take off. It was extremely rough terrain and
the airplane is bouncing and bouncing. It gets to point one and it ain’t flying
and it is bouncing and it gets to point two and it ain’t flying and he keeps
going and he keeps going. He gets to the end, goes through the brush, hits a
creek and the airplane turns over and it’s wrecked. I start running down to
grab him out and I said, “damn, what in the hell did you do wrong?” He
said, “Ray, it was just ready to fly, it was just ready to fly!” Well, there was
no way that plane was going to fly!
The point of this story is, and I have told it many times, when you make a
plan and it’s a good plan, stick with it.
87
Theron Smith
It was getting pretty close to Christmas and I was living in Bethel. This guy
wanted to be flown down to the southeast, out to the mountain, more or less.
There was a cabin there and he was going to stay there for the winter and try
and do some trapping. The weather was fairly decent, so away we went and
the river was still open and he had always been able to walk it across the
river. We landed over in the grass. He said, “I can’t wait here till that gets
frozen, I’ll freeze out here and won’t have enough food.” He said, “if you
could get me on the other side of the river, that would be best thing.”
I kept looking around quite a bit and I decided that maybe I could land in a
certain place in there on the other side, pretty close to the cabin. Then I
figured that I would have to chop down some trees to get out of there. I
landed there. It was fairly short but made it o.k. The snow was about 3 feet
deep, all soft. It hadn’t frozen at the bottom. It was all soggy wet at the
bottom. Of course, you stop the airplane in there, the skis freeze.
We got the stuff out of there and I started chopping and I was going to go
around the bend, follow the oxbow of the river and turn off and come across
this thing then I would get off the ground and away I would go. The trees
88
were up pretty big. I taxied back and forth in the snow and got it so I had a
little bit of freezing on it but I should have stayed there another day. Here I
come around the corner and soon as I got off the ice onto the snow the
airplane wouldn’t come around with me like it was supposed to. It ran into a
tree and made a big dent about a third down the wing. That broke the tree
down, of course, so I got that out of there. I decided that maybe I would just
start across the ice there instead of going around.
By this time, the snow was freezing a little on the edges. I got in and turned
around and got it squared away and away I go and all of a sudden I didn’t
quite make it and there was a whole bunch of small trees right over there and
I ran through those. That kind of messed up the airplane quite a bit. There
was a small lake in there that was hardly frozen at all. I went across that and
got stopped in there. The one ski went down about 2 feet and I thought that
was just the end of the day because there was no way I could get out yet that
day.
So we walked down to the cabin which was a couple miles away. I didn’t
have enough wire on the airplane because it was tangled up on the tree and
pulled it out. I went over and got his cabin fired up. We stayed the night.
89
The next day I came down and got the wiring and radio fixed up so I could
call. I called down to Bethel and told them I had a problem that they had to
bring another airplane over.
In the meantime I was fixing a place to fly there. We trimmed down a bunch
of trees, used our snowshoes and got the snow all packed down. We had a
nice place there by the third day. Finally here comes a plane in with a
mechanic. We had to glue down a bunch of the fabric. Putting that glue
down didn’t work very well in the cold. It took a few days there and we
finally got it out of there. The mechanic flew it back to Anchorage and I got
the good airplane.
Jim Branson
I have been terrified, but it is hard to pick out a single incident. I can tell
you about one that Smitty got me into and he also got me out of.
I was just getting a float rating. It was in June, a beautiful day. I was based
in Kenai and I went up to Anchorage and got my FAA flight check for a
float rating and then I had to get one from Theron before I could take the
airplane home and use it.
90
Theron was pretty busy all the time so sometimes you had to wait quite a
while before he could get around to doing something for you. About 9:00
that night, we finished the flight check. He turned me loose o.k. and I
headed on back for home. We were using Longmere Lake in those days and
I suspect everybody still is. It is a fairly long, narrow lake and lies north and
south with trees on east/west and north side with long open muskeg on the
south side.
It was a beautiful evening and while flying down there, I could see all these
beautiful golden lakes underneath me. I came around, made my approach
from the south, came into Longmere and got between those trees and the
world turned solid black. I couldn’t see anything.
Theron had drummed into me and everybody else too what you do on glassy
water and what you do on whiteouts. I set it up, waiting to feel the water
and hoping I felt it before I came to the north end of the lake. I did, of
course, but if it hadn’t been for Theron being late, I wouldn’t have been
landing that late and if you hadn’t taught me how to get out of it, I would
have really messed it up.
91
Ray Tremblay
Do you remember Bob Vanderpool? He had a flying service and he flew out
of Red Devil, Sleetmute. I was in McGrath at the time. He was flying a
Pacer and he had gone into town. He also had a trading post, a store. He
bought a whole bunch of groceries and things. He was flying back and he
came through the pass and was coming down the south fork of the
Kuskokwim River, through Rainy Pass. The weather was way down. As
most guys did, he was letting one tank run dry. He was having trouble
staying visual so he’s flying just on top of the treetops and the tank drains so
he reaches down to the selector valve. On the Pacer it is right there by your
knee. He reached down there to switch the tank and the selector value had
fallen off. Now he has no gas, and so he crashes into a bunch of scrub
spruce.
The next day he was picked up but now he has this airplane there and it is
pretty well smashed up. They got the plane back up somehow. He got the
gear back on, put a new prop on and all the ripped up fabric and everything –
we’re talking 40 below zero – they wet sheets down and molded them on the
plane. They froze there of course and he actually flew that airplane to
McGrath. He stayed very low so he didn’t get any kind of an inversion.
92
--end of Tape #3—
--start of Tape #4—
Richard Hensel
Before I was privileged to check out with the Fish and Wildlife Service, and
as a means of accumulating hours toward my private license I sometimes
flew cross country flights in conjunction with regular Service work. This
relates to the time I crashed the flying clubs T-craft in Karluk Lake. On a
bright clear April day, the 21st in fact, the plan was for me to deliver some
freight and mail to Camp Island fish encampment and chack the lakes
condition that was in the later stages of breakup. The lake was essentially
ice free and absolutely flat calm, like a mirror, when I arrived an hour and a
half later from a Kodiak takeoff.
93
94
Having had some training in the execution of glassy water landings I aligned
my straight in approach to touch down as instructed using the island
shoreline to help gauge my descending height. Peering out one side window
and then the other, I determined I was much too high and would overshoot
that point on the island where I needed to beach. A correction was in order
and valid, however I turned over the lake, rather than over the island for
another go around, added some more power, and moments laterturned again,
over water, to return to the island. The first turn was naturally a fatal
mistake because the shoreline reference would be lost. Halfway through the
second turn, my right wingtip hit the water and the nose first impact was
severe enough to shear the floats from the fuselage. I was uninjured but
stunned and totally dismayed as to how and why this could have happened–
airborne one second, a dead stop on the next. The cockpit was filling with
water at a rapid rate so I opened the door, inflated my vest and swam to the
tail still projecting from the water. Meanwhile several persons on shore
witnessed the incident and a skiff was promptly launched for my rescue. I
remained relatively calm, hardly any shock until I was situated in the main
dormitory facility at which time I started to tremble severely. The plane of
course sank. I radioed Troyer to have a Kodiak Airways Goose stop by for
my return to Kodiakafter convincing him over the air that the engine
95
wouldn’t start because it was floded, really flooded. The T-craft is still to
this day at rest in the bottom of Karluk Lake.
Jim King
One of the problems for me used to be flying into Lake Hood. One of the
elements that we had to deal with that hasn’t been mentioned is the little
radios that we had in the Pacers and the Cubs. They had a reel and a wire
and you had to reel this wire out and kind of tune it for length with a little
dial in order to make the radio work. You had to have a different length of
antennae for each frequency. Approaching Lake Hood, you had to make
your first contact with the tower with the antennae out, as well as trying to
figure out which way to land and watch for other traffic and kind of fit into
the thing there. When you got in the traffic pattern you needed to wind the
wire this thing in then you could still talk to the tower when you were in the
traffic pattern.
When we first started using those things, they had a little deal that looked
like a little windsock to pull the antennae out. I guess a lot of them got lost
because they would catch in the water. Regularly, people would come into
the Aircraft Division and pull the plane in and park it some where or other or
96
come up the ramp with the wire still out. (The shop stopped using those
windsocks and hung a little plastic funnel on the wire bottom sideforward
and this wouldn’t tear loose). If I was on amphibs, I would inevitably be
greeted in Anchorage by Terry Smith, all two feet of him, announcing, “your
antennae is out!”
Cal Lensink
That one approach, you would come in basically following International
Airport Road and then take a right turn for final into the Fish and Wildlife
Cove. If you were coming out there with 65 turns out on your antennae,
there was no way you were going to reel it in before you hit the water. I
didn’t even try!
John Sarvis
Like you guys, I landed a couple of times with the antennae out and didn’t
realize I hadn’t put it in. It would be dragging along and someone would tell
you about it and you would be all embarrassed.
One time I landed and I already knew it was out. I was trying to crank it
back in and just like the fuel valve you were talking about, the handle fell off
97
and soon as the handle fell off, the whole thing spun off. I didn’t have
anyway to crank it up and I had a whole pile of wire in my lap. That time, at
least I knew it.
Ray Tremblay
Remember the Gullwing Stinson had a lead ball and when you left that lead
ball someplace, it was effective. I came to land at Phillips Field one time
and I started out to reel this thing in and I came in right over this house.
There was a guy working on the roof and I remember him looking at my
airplane and I was thinking what was the matter with him. Then all of a
sudden I see him jump off the roof! I guess he thought he was going to be
hit in the head with that lead ball!
Bob Richey
These are some hard acts to follow, however, each one of them – I must
have had my share – because each one of these gentlemen remind me of a
few things.
Speaking of Lake Hood and not being safe, I was taxiing out – we had that
amphib 185 – I was cleared for take off to the west, out of Spenard Lake.
98
Most of us are listening to what traffic is going on before we go in and we
ought to be listening before we take off, right?
I was cleared to take off to the west and I was way on the east end of
Spenard Lake so I was just getting up on the step, and I heard the tower say,
“cleared for the east.” I thought, wait a minute, and before I got to the
channel, here comes this Cub around the corner headed right for me. I just
chopped it and got out of the way. I hadn’t hit the channel yet.
The tower said, “sorry about that.” That is all he said. The rest of the
summer, on that amphib, I didn’t mind landing on the lake because I could
see what was going on. For the rest of the summer, it shook me up so much,
I always taxied to the strip on that amphib and took off for wherever I was
going.
I guess all of us have, especially in the areas we were flying, ended with a
few dings. Earlier you were talking about flying with loads. I had a
biologist to take up to the mountains in the very early spring. We used to do
a lot of landings up there. This was a particular Saturday morning. I guess I
99
had other things to do and I showed up and you know how these people are
bringing so much gear. I had a 180 on wheel/skis.
I should have made two trips. I realized that later. I stuffed everything in
and we took off. Because I had plenty on and I had a pretty good coming in,
I cut it a little bit short because I didn’t want to run out of the saddle and go
on off down in the canyon. Everything looked good for a moment and then
all of a sudden, we went through the willows and there I was. We unloaded
everything, and we would first get one ski up and then the other one would
cut in.
After about 6 hours, they came looking for us. I think it was Dave Spencer.
He found us and I was able to talk to him and about that time, we were just
about to get to the solid stuff and I did get out of there o.k. But, these types
of things do happen. When I was flying the Goose – I had a lot of good
mentors – I attribute some of my deafness in my right ear to my mentors.
I was with Tom Belleau. We had taken some people to King Salmon and
then I was just starting to learn to fly the Goose and Tom said, “let’s go over
to south Naknek. There is a good cross wind over there.” The wind was
100
blowing about 12-14 knots. I wasn’t getting the nose down. He said, “put
the nose down, get the nose down.” I stuck the nose down and we were
going along on the gravel on the nose for a moment and he said, “well, not
that far down!”
We were working some lakes out there and I was lining up for a lake that I
wasn’t sure at that time how deep the lake was. You use to be able to tell if
a lake is deep or not by what you could see on the surface. He told me to go
in and land on this lake and just before we got there, it just didn’t look right
to me and I poured the coals to it and he said, “what did you do that for?”
Well, it just didn’t look good to me so we never went back to that particular
lake.
Each one of you today have brought your experiences here. As far as
accidents, I have been very fortunate. I have been kind of slow in pushing it.
A lot of times I would have Washington folks with me and others. One
thing about Washington folks, it is hard for them to unwind if they are just
coming up for the first time and they want the wheels up at 8:00 and they
mean 8:00. A lot of times it is hard for them to relax.
101
I had some people with me once and we were flying from Fort Yukon to
Kaktovik. I had a woman with us from Washington and over the trip, we
kind of lost her at Bethel because she had never tented before. She had
never had on a pair of hip boots before and it was a pretty rough trip. We
went to the Selawik River. We were between Fort Yukon going over the
hills. I was probably 9,000 – 10,000 feet and she had to make a pit stop.
She came forward and told me what she had to do and I said, “I’m sorry,
there are no pit stops between here and Kaktovik.” I told her that I had a
coffee can in the back. She went to the back and found the coffee can. We
landed at Kaktovik and she came up to me and she said, “what should I do
with the coffee can?”
I was only in one accident. That was over at Chisik Island many years ago.
I had flown in there in the Cub. I had another pilot with me. We were doing
some enforcement work over there. The winds started to come up in the
afternoon as they normally do and it was getting a little choppy out there and
he got really worried about it and he said, “we got to get out of here, we got
to go.” I said, “well, o.k.” He had quite a bit of float time and he wanted to
fly it so I let him.
102
He headed out on this chop and of course after hitting three or four of those,
we were put up in the air but instead of coming down and waiting until we
got flying speed, I’m sitting back there realizing that the plane is not ready to
fly yet. It was a really helpless feeling. I wanted to shout to him to get the
nose down but I thought if I did that, he might stub it. But just sitting back
there knowing what was happening was such a terribly helpless feeling.
The minute it started to fall off on that right wing, of course he stalled it out
by trying to catch it, I still see today that left wing hit the water. The next
thing, I still see that prop hitting that green water and over we went. What
came to my mind next was I took my elbow and tried to knock out the
plastic window and in my mind, I said, “you know, if I want to see another
sunrise, I’ve got to get out of this damn thing.” That is just what went
through my mind.
I finally got the door open and tried to get out and I forgot that I still had my
seatbelt on. I did get out and we were upside down. That green water was
coming up. I finally pulled the pilot out and he kept saying, “what
happened, what happened.”
103
Some fishermen there at Chisik came over and picked us up. Later we got
picked up in a Goose.
That was the only serious ding that I ever had. I have been very fortunate. I
have had some wonderful mentors, going back to Theron. I ran through an
awful lot of others and I picked up something from each of them. I was just
really fortunate to fly all the stuff we had.
We had the Baron’s which were beautiful. I remember taking a 58 up on the
slope there and landing at Franklin Bluffs. We were trying to get in some
VIP’s. We went over to McGrath and on to Fairbanks to pick up some more
people and went up to Galbrath Lake then I was to take them into Dead
Horse and just before we got there, within 15 or 20 minutes, Dead Horse
went down. I was flying the highway up there and there was an old strip
there, probably 5,000 feet or so at Franklin Bluffs. I went in there and
started to drive it and there was a helicopter coming up the road and I made
contact with him and I said, “would you mind driving that strip down there
and let me know if there are any serious problems with it.”
104
He told me there was a big ditch at the north end, but otherwise, it looked
pretty good. So I drug it again with a plane full of people. It was a Baron
58. OAS had leased it. We went in there with no problem. We turned
around and taxiing out, sure enough, there was that big ditch. If we had hit
that, we would just have wiped it out. We taxied up and parked. A pick-up
truck came out and said, “what in the hell are you doing here, this strip
hasn’t been used for 2 years!”
They loaned us their vehicle and the VIP’s were able to use it. I just stayed
there with the airplane. These things do go on. I had some really good trips.
John Sarvis
There are a couple other people that we haven’t heard from or talked about.
Al Crane comes to mind. Does anyone have an “Al Crane” story?
Ave Thayer is another pilot that couldn’t be here today.
105
Theron Smith
I want to talk about something and that is landing in water where you don’t
know the depth. One of the things you know if you practice this enough is
that the water lilies, the water is deep enough when they are up on the water.
You can land anywhere where there are lily pads as long as you don’t run
into something in the middle where it is empty. There are other plants that
you can do the same thing with. This is just something to keep in mind
when you run into this dilemma.
Dick Hensel
One story coming to mind about Ave Thayer concerns the time he was
circling an osprey nest on the Kenai Moose Refuge when suddenly an
osprey came crashing through the windshield of his Super Cub. Despite the
guts, blood, blurred vision and a dramatically altered aerodynamic he
managed to land safely.
Theron Smith
I want to tell another story. There were a couple of people from Washington
that wanted to travel around Cordova. I was flying several other people
during the summer. I had to just pick them up when I could and take care of
them when I could because I had others.
106
I was down at Kodiak. I was there a day or so with them and I picked them
up and was supposed to take them to McGrath but you couldn’t get over
there because the pass was closed. It was coming from the west and getting
pretty heavy. I came back to Homer and landed and got something to eat
and waited to decide if we could go in that evening. It was clearing up so I
waited for a while longer and we decided it was going to be o.k., so I
climbed out of there and I was going to climb 2,000 feet above the
mountain. I was going to climb up and go on instruments.
As soon as I climbed up there, ice started forming on the airplane so I
dropped another 1,000 feet and was going to be more or less clear of icing. I
was continuing on and as I was getting across the water going into the
mountains, there was a big roll of stuff coming over the mountains. I
thought I could handle it all right and as soon as I dove into that, the airplane
was just bouncing around and I was in the mountains by then and I was
losing altitude. I thought if I turned around, I would be sure to hit the
mountains because by the time I turned around, I would be too low so I kept
on going and at this time, ice was forming on the plane again.
107
I was using every inch I had to keep it higher as we went over the
mountains. I felt that I was still losing but I was going slowly. I had to
watch the direction we were going because the thing seemed to be blowing
south. I had to turn the thing about 30 degrees to keep control then I decided
that I had better turn it a little bit north and get out of there and get over to a
lake. I thought if I don’t hit anything, I’m going to make it! That’s about all
you could say, really.
It was hard to get a point on Iliamna River so I moved over north and pretty
soon, down I went and I couldn’t see out of the windshield because it was all
iced up. I saw behind that gee there was water down there so I made the
lake and figured out exactly where I was. Pretty soon, the ice started to
come off. My passengers didn’t seem to be interested in any of this. They
weren’t scared! We landed there and stayed the night. Maybe they didn’t
know enough to be scared. That’s about the closest I ever came to killing
myself and everybody with me.
Ray Tremblay
I think it is about time to tell some “fess-up” stories.
108
When I first started flying, I was flying the Gullwing Stinson out of
Fairbanks. That to me was the best airplane in the world. I really loved that
airplane.
They had a wildlife conference going on in Fairbanks and all of the
Canadian biologists were there, from all over. There was a concern about
the caribou. We had lots of caribou and Canada didn’t have their caribou.
We had a few of the big caribou experts there. Ray Woolford said to me,
“why don’t you fly them over the Beaver Creek area and show them the
calving grounds.” It was the time of year when they were calving and there
were just thousands of them over there. He said, “I’ll send Sig Olson with
you and Sig will be the biologist, he’ll talk and you just be the pilot.”
If you remember the Gullwing Stinson, it had a fairly high nose. There was
a seat for three people in the back and then there was a pilot seat and the co-pilot
seat. To get in it, you had to go through and up between the seats.
They came out and the airplane was all ready to go. I got them all in and
then I thought they would like to listen to the tower. I figured I might as
well give them the whole nine yards.
109
I turned on the speakers. Back then, there were no hangars, nothing in
Fairbanks. The runway was brand new. I am parked right in front of the
tower. Sig, my partner, was supposed to be helping me. I relied on him,
which was a mistake.
The point of this story is after I had them seated and had the engine running,
ran the prop through, and I had everything ready to go. I called the tower
and I said, “tower, this is N-782. I am ready to taxi to the active runway.”
There was this pause and finally this voice came back and it said, “782 you
are cleared to taxi, suggest you untie your wing first!”
Now I have to shut the engine off, come back down, step on their feet and
get out and untie – you can see by now how this is really building up
confidence in your passengers. The whole trip went down from there.
One other story. Like all of you, we had people we had to fly around. We
had some congressmen and others that we had to fly. We had the Grumman
Goose. We had the Grumman out in front of the hangar. It was all polished
up and it was just shining. I had to be in my uniform. We had those brown
110
uniforms. I am in the cabin taking the straps and folding them nice and neat.
There were going to be some congressmen and their wives.
I’ve got leather shoes on and pretty soon this cavalcade of cars come up.
Big limo’s, etc. They start getting out of the cars in front of the airplane, I
walk out of the plane, and you know the steps that hang – well as I get out,
my foot slips and it slides down inside of that track. Now, I have two
choices – one is to fall forward or just stay back stuck. I went forward and I
am lying there with my foot hanging in the air. They are all standing there
looking at me. I said, “good morning, I am your pilot!”
111
Dick Hensel
112
I you might sayf we’re fessing up, Rays story reminded me of an incident
one summer when the Kodiak salmon canneries began operating at full bore.
The weather was bad, Kodiak Airways was having difficulty flying cannery
workers out of Kodiak and started bussing Filipinos to the neighboring
Anton Larson bay where the higher ceiling permitted them to land, load and
transport them to outlying island canneries. Coming from Afognak in a
small skiff, I arrived at the ramp area with the intention of anchoring the
skiff out in deep water so it wouldn’t go dry. On the road above the ramp
was a bus load of waiting passengers and as I set about making preparationsI
noted they were keenly observing each of my actions. The anchoring trick
consisted of coiling the anchor line on the quarter deck then placing the
anchor on top of the coil. A second line connected to the anchor was to be
tied off above the high tide mark to later enable pulling the anchor along
with the skiff to the waterline the next time the skiff was to be used. Once
the second line was tied to the anchor it was a matter of giving the skiff a
tremendous push until it went far enough to deeper water then next tu

Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections.

The following transcription taken from videotapes converted to
cassette tapes of interviews with retired Fish and Wildlife Service
pilots and aircraft mechanics. Video interview made January 2000,
in Anchorage, Alaska as part of the annual pilots training.
(Transcription of cassette tapes by Mary E. Smith, 4120 Dorothy
Drive, Anchorage, Alaska, March 2002.)
John Sarvis
Welcome to all of you. We are going to try and record this so please pass
the mike around when you and/or the next person speak. Let’s start with
Jerry Lawhorn. Why don’t you tell us what your role was and what you did.
Jerry Lawhorn
Thanks. I wrote a few notes here and they are not in any sequence. You
will just have to bear with me. It says here that I started with the Fish and
Wildlife Aircraft Division in 1956. I came on board from Alaska Airlines. I
was their Bush Maintenance Foreman then. It gave me a good back ground
because they had 30+ airplanes and I specialized in non-standard airplanes.
They had one of everything that was ever built I believe. From the Douglas
Dolphin to the tri-motor Stinsons, the Bellanca’s, the Sky Rocket’s, Pace
Maker’s, Travel Air, Norseman, AG-19’s, and a little bit of everything.
When they got out of the business of Bush airplane flying, it left me kind of
afoot so they wanted me to go with the main line and be the maintenance
2
foreman over there. I told them that I had just as soon walk down the street
and see if I couldn’t get a job. So, I wandered down the street and sure
enough, Tom Wardleigh and Theron Smith hired me, along with one of my
mechanics. I stayed through the whole smear. It was kind of rough and
tumbly first off because we weren’t a State yet; still a Territory and
everything was kind of rough around the edges.
We gradually became the facility that all the operators looked up to for a
change. We were always called the Fish and Wildlife Service or the Federal
Government. It wasn’t, what they call now, the Feds. They showed a lot of
respect for us and it was a place that all the mechanics would like to go to
work because of the quality of the maintenance and the people. There
weren’t too many local folks running around then either.
We were, as Theron will explain, an unfunded division of the Fish and
Wildlife. We all realized that we were leaches. All the various branches
had to divvy up some of their money to support us. We were a necessary
evil. We had the means for them to get around the country. Theron had to
be quite a talker to make sure everyone divvied up enough for us leaches to
do our job. We became quite a “can do” organization. There was nothing
that
anybody suggested to us that we couldn’t try to do one way or the other. If
there was a better way to go about that we would sure give it a go.
Tom Wardleigh was second in command there and Theron was the main
boss. He was the supervisor. It wasn’t too long after I got there that Tom
Wardleigh saw that there wasn’t really any way for him to go up unless
Theron dropped dead somewhere along the line. He decided to transfer over
to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for a little better look at his
economic future.
That left me kind of filling Tom’s slot. Theron was such a great boss that he
did all the work in dredging up the money for me to play with! He was a
boss that pointed me and then stepped back out of the way. You couldn’t
beat a boss like that especially when he gave you funds to work with. He
would have to get me back in line some times because I would tend to get a
little carried away on some of my projects.
4
We established a lot of precedence through the aircraft division. Other
operators would, once in awhile, if they had a problem with an airplane,
come over and see if we could solve the problem. We established a lot of
modifications to the standard to fit in with their operation. They built these
darn things in Kansas and Pennsylvania and they are made for concrete
runways and training airplanes and that sort of thing. They didn’t fit very
well with our rough and tumble backwoods business. We constantly were
modifying things.
We had a maintenance turnover of maybe losing a mechanic every year or
two and by and large those folks that went away, they went with the FAA
and became general aviation maintenance inspectors. We produced quite a
few of FAA folks from our maintenance facility.
We depended a lot on the military surplus airplanes and parts. We had the
Grumman Goose which was all surplus and we ended up with a train carload
of spare parts for them. We also absconded with 33 R9-85 engines that were
freshly overhauled by the military. We had free engines that the taxpayers
had already paid for. All we had to do was pay for the freight to get them up
here. We had free airplanes, free parts and free engines. All we had to do
5
was provide gas. They made a real good Bush plane for us to supply our
camps. We hauled out boats and motors, etc., to the camps.
We established all kinds of modifications. Tom Wardleigh and I,
essentially, started the big tires on modern airplanes in Alaska. The military,
years ago, right after WWII, decided that the L-19’s and all their liaison
airplanes, the off-airport airplanes, needed tandem landing gears. I don’t
know how many of you here today know what a tandem landing gear is but
it is one wheel ahead of the other wheel with the original gear axle in-between.
That let both gears articulate.
We absconded with a few sets of those and bought a few sets. That made
all the operators want them too. They were great to an extent in that if you
are on gravel or dirt you could turn the airplane quite readily. If you were on
hard surface, which was not likely then, it would take a city block to turn the
darn things around. You were trying to scrub one wheel against the other
and they only had brakes on the rear wheel and they were better than nothing
but we were constantly gusseting from landing gear legs because of the
twisting motion. They weren’t built to be twisted like that. The gear would
crack.
6
We ended up with some Curtis Robbin tires. They were 25x11x4. The Cub
tires and wheels were 800x4. Those folks measured 4 inches different! The
Curtis Robbin tire is about 5 inches inside, not 4. I don’t know who built
their measuring sticks but after repairing some of these landing gears and
fighting that battle, I asked Tom if he thought that Wes Landis could build
us some adapters where we could adapt one 4” tire to a 4” wheel. He
allowed as by golly, he would go and see.
Well, it wasn’t long until the government airplanes came out with big tires.
The operators, seeing all this that the government people were doing,
thought this to be the greatest, latest thing so sure enough, everybody started
using big tires in Alaska. I don’t know if Tom and I are responsible for that
or not but we sure were around the hangar.
We had a radio communications system. Everybody knew where everybody
was at all times. We had a lot of field stations and there was a fellow who
went to McGrath for the summer. He used to come over to my place and
drink home brew. He thought that was pretty good stuff. He was going to
be based over in McGrath for three months. One evening he called me up
on the radio (had one at my house) and wanted to know what all the
7
consistencies were for the home brew. I started out telling him all the stuff
and as it turned out, every field station in Alaska had a comment as to what
kind of bottles to use, you name it, from Tok to Dillingham, from Kotzebue
to a Research vessel in Juneau! This tells you two things – our
communications system was better than you can imagine and every body
liked to drink beer! With that, I’d like to turn this microphone over to
someone else for awhile.
8
Jim Branson
Hello. I went to work for the Fish and Wildlife Service in Southeast as a
boat operator/enforcement officer in 1949. The first permanent job that I
could get with the outfit was in Anchorage in 1951. I moved here to
Anchorage and soloed in 1952. I was then shipped over to Kodiak. That
kind of cut into my flight training. I got back to Kenai in 1955 and finally
got enough time. As I recall, it was 100 hours for a private license in those
days. I got checked out in government airplanes, worked through Statehood
and in 1963 finally got tired of Holger Larsen? and switched back to the
National Marine Fisheries Service and spent the next 13 years in Kodiak
working as an enforcement officer. I retired from them in 1976 and then
spent the last 12 years of my career with the North Pacific Fisheries
Management Council.
I am really a pretty low time pilot. I have a little over 2000 hours and never
had anything but a single engine private license. I flew Cubs, Pacers, 180’s,
170’s and a couple things that Lawhorn put together. One called a sub-Cub.
I recall it as a 115 Pacer fuselage with a 150 in it and Super Cub wings. It
was a pretty good airplane until the waterfowl biologists busted it up.
9
That’s about it. I think someone pointed out earlier here that those were
really grand times. I know in 1963, Ray Tremblay and I and others here
would sit around and talk about the good old days but you guys here this
morning reminded me how nice it is to be retired (laughter and clapping).
Richard Hensel:
I started out in the mid 1950’s and more or less bounced along the first few
years as a seasonal em[ployee, mostly with River Basin Studies, until I was
assigned full time to Kodiak as an Assistant Refuge Manager. Shortly
thereafter, I checked out and became qualified to operate a government
Supercub. I flew for a total of about 8 years and spent much time trying to
line p the black ball along two dark lines; my friends called me “Yaw.” I
also flew some in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region after having
transferred in 1970 to Anchorage. I too am basically a low time pilot and
owe much to Theron Smith. Thank you, Theron, for helping me survive for
you’re the guy who gave 100% when giving check rides to ensure I and
others like me made landings with their skin intact.
I might conclude these opening remarks by saying that in the summer of
1956, as I walked around the hull of a Goose parked by the Lake Hood
10
hangar, I overheard some sputtering sounds coming from the cockpit
window. I hollered an hello upward and from the window pops a little 9
year-old boy who had been making playful sounds of a running engine---
that was this guy right here today, Terry Smith.
Terry Smith
I started with the Fish and Wildlife Service in 1949. I was two years old!
Dad took a job with the Fish and Wildlife Aircraft Division as the Aircraft
Supervisor. No one knew quite what that was. I have a number of letters
that he sent just recently that talk about he and Clarence Rhode trying to
define what the job might entail and trying to sort out the Aircraft Division
in total. I was raised in the Fish and Wildlife hangar. We figured roughly
close to 5,000 hours of government airplanes before I left to go to college. I
was able to benefit probably more than any other single pilot from all the
adages, advice and subtleties that Dad had to offer.
Dad retired in 1973 and Gordon Watson needed someone to fly the turbine-
Goose. I had been spending my entire life trying to get to a point to go to
work for Fish and Wildlife and fly the Grumman. I flew the Grumman all
11
through 1973 and 1974 and came back from South America with N-780 as
an OAS (Office of Aircraft Services) pilot.
It had happened while we were gone. It was a relationship that was basically
not to be because with the initial interview process I had not worked for
OAS. Their philosophy was that anything that you did with the Grumman
Goose could be done with a big helicopter. That was the beginning of the
end of our relationship.
I went on to do other things in aviation. As a “free” employee of the Fish
and Wildlife Service from ages 2 through 22 and as a “true” employee were
probably the best years that I have ever had. The operation as it grew during
the territorial years with Jerry and Tom and Dad running the Aircraft
Division, I can truly tell you that even at home, the conversations were all
around getting the job done. The Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, Sport
Fisheries, Game Management, or Waterfowl would come up with a problem.
The problem would be “we need to do this.” The conversation around our
house, even at the dinner table, was “man, this is going to be interesting” and
between Tom, Jerry, Dad, and the whole group out there at the hangar, the
12
Aircraft Division for the Fish and Wildlife Service was truly dedicated to the
Bureau.
There never was any money. That was always the other part of the
discussions on a general basis. The 180 showed up and it wouldn’t go on
any of the floats that were in the fleet. The 3430’s (capacity of this plane, JL
note) were available because they would go on the Cessna 195 that the Air
Force used for search and rescue. Consequently, all of you have probably
seen pictures of the only installation of 3430’s on the 180’s for the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service in Alaska.
Jerry stuck the airplane on there in the proper fashion. A number of times
on Lake Hood, when the only airplane that would be out on the Lake for a
several hour period with the southeast wind blowing about 25 was a Fish and
Wildlife 180 on 3430’s with wide spreader bars and an airplane squatted
down between the floats.
It was truly a magical period in aviation history in Alaska because the
innovation creativity and the attitude that the job was what was important.
There wasn’t anything else. The job needed to get done safely and
13
efficiently. There wasn’t any money, so it always had to be done efficiently.
One of the people who benefited and added to that was Ray Tremblay.
Ray Tremblay
I started in early 1951 (1953 JL note) as an enforcement agent/pilot. I spent
my early career in Fairbanks; in 1956, moved to McGrath. I was in charge
of the McGrath district for 5 years then moved back to Fairbanks for 2 more
years then to Anchorage for the rest of my career. I retired in 1978 and took
over as aircraft supervisor for the Department of Public Safety. I spent 5
years there.
In listening to the stories here today, they all seem to be focusing on the
gentleman to my left here (Theron Smith) who was the first Fish and
Wildlife Service pilot. Everything that we did and all of our skills were
because of his tutelage and his patience and his willingness to spend
whatever time it took to get us off of dead center and into becoming a
functioning pilot.
I can remember several of my earlier check rides when this little kid would
come along and sit in the back seat and he knew more than I did! He would
14
be pointing out some of the mistakes that I would make and I really didn’t
like that very much!
Listening to you talking today, I don’t know whether you really want to hear
what we did. There was a pile of stuff that had to be flown from here to
there and if it fit in the airplane, you threw it in and you flew. We never
thought too much about weight and balance. We knew about it but it was a
job that had to be done and that is what we did. We put it in the airplane and
we would fly. If we couldn’t get off, then it was the airplane’s fault. That
doesn’t work today. When I was chief pilot for the Department of Public
Safety I rammed that home a lot with my pilots over there.
With that and with the understanding that we will probably have some other
things to say later, I will turn the mike over to my mentor here. I think the
key to any successful pilot in this kind of a business is to have the right
mentor, the kind that has been there, to work with and learn from his
mistakes.
15
This gentleman on my left (Theron Smith) is probably the pilot in Alaska
that knows more about all of the aspects of our flying than anyone else. He
is here today, he is alive to talk about flying!
Theron, you will have to forgive me for telling this one. Talking about
having to get the job done and talking about trying to get money, well what
Theron did was he flew for other agencies to make money to keep the Fish
and Wildlife Service Aircraft section going. I think it was the Park Service
that had two Jon boats, two people, and a bunch of freight to fly over the
Alaska Range to some lake. This was going to be done in a standard Beaver
on amphibian floats. Jerry lashed two Jon boats on the struts and Theron
took off in it and it flew! We didn’t even know if it was going to fly. Then,
after he found out it would fly, he then came back and loaded it up with gas,
all tanks.
He then loaded the people, all their freight, went down and took off on the
west runway at International, went roaring down the runway, finally got it
off and settled into Cook Inlet. He taxied around and the passengers had to
get out and walk through the mud to get back to the airport because he
couldn’t get back off again. Finally, he took off and I think by the time he
16
got to Kenai, he was able to get airborne and get back to the runway. This is
the kind of a guy that Theron was.
What you all want to do here is listen to these stories but don’t try to apply
these experiences to your own flying because in this day and age, you will
not get away with it! Theron, here you are.
Theron Smith
That was quite a job. If I flew the plane with one boat, it worked fine, if I
put two boats on, it didn’t work worth a damn.
I was born here in Anchorage. My dad was working for the railroad. We
left Anchorage and went to Palmer and we lived there many years.
The Nation decided that maybe more pilots were needed in the Navy so they
started on the rest of the states and they finally came to Anchorage and they
had about 25 people in Anchorage who could be trained as pilots. They had
a paper where you wrote down what you did and then they decided who was
going to learn or not. Of course, I had to drive from Palmer down to
Anchorage.
17
The road was pretty new then. I would go from Palmer to Anchorage about
three times a week and go to teach at the school on paper you know. I found
out that there was about two months, I guess, and then they decided who was
going to pass and who was not. Well, I passed. There were about 5 of us
that made it. I was working for the road commission up on the mountain
over there. I was a pretty good mechanic then because my dad taught me. I
would go to Anchorage and fly an hour after work. That went on for about
2-1/2 months. I finally passed. I think I had about 55 hours at that time and
then you got a certificate. I was still working on the railroad.
The military started building in Alaska. I was working at the time over at
McGrath. I came to Anchorage and was flying to get my time up and the
war started. I enlisted. I learned to wash the dishes. I was wondering what
was going to happen after washing the dishes. I decided I was going to get
the hell out of there.
I found a guy that said they needed more people to be pilots. I learned to
teach those people and that went on for about a year and half. Then they
printed a thing that said that even if you didn’t have 2 years of pilot training
or school that they would be pilots. Of course, I was already a pilot so I had
18
to print out two papers what I had done and they then sent me down to
Seattle. Finally, I became a pilot.
They didn’t tell us where we were going and in the middle of the night they
called us up to get on the airplane. They gave us an envelope and told us to
carry it with us and told us that after we get into the air, then open up the
envelope and see where we were going. We had been there for a whole day
working and then we spent most of the night getting more stuff for the
airplane, food and all sorts of things. I think it was about 11:00 in the
morning.
I put most of the people asleep and I had a navigator up in the bow and had
the engineer sitting on the right side and away we went. Pretty soon I
thought the engineer was asleep. The next thing I knew, I had flown almost
4 hours, all of us asleep! The navigator came out of the bow and came up
and here we were. His eyes were big and he was scared as hell! He was
about ready to jump out.
I looked immediately to find out what the altitude was and where we were
going. It seemed like we were going pretty good. I told him to go on down
19
in the bow and start checking where we were and I would check on my side.
We finally determined that we were only about 40 miles south of where we
should be. There were a whole bunch of airplanes going out but I never saw
one of them anyway. (laughter) We were supposed to check in every hour
and I told the guy on the radio to call and just tell them that we couldn’t
make contact with anyone.
I was there for 6 months then the War ended. They hauled that same old
airplane back to the states. I went down to Florida and stayed there ‘til the
War ended. I learned quite a bit. I could run the airplane pretty well. As
soon as the War ended, I had quite a time deciding whether I was going to
stay in or get out. I finally decided to get out.
I bought a twin engine Cessna and overhauled it. It went along pretty well.
I was going to fly independent but the Nation was changing quite a lot.
Most of the airplanes available were busted and wouldn’t fly. I contacted
Ray Peterson and he wanted me to fly for him so I did. I went to Bethel. I
was working lots of hours, 7 days a week for about 4 years. Clarence
(Rhode) was flying there too, intermittently, then he came back to Fish and
Wildlife and then he went down to Juneau. I knew him pretty well and he
20
called me and asked me if I wanted a job to run the Fish and Wildlife
airplanes. I thought back and forth about it quite a bit.
I had been out at the Lake. There wasn’t much there. There were a few
airplanes around there and a few buildings. Fish and Wildlife had about
three old buildings that were about to collapse. There were some airplanes
in the snow. He contacted me again and I decided to go. There wasn’t
much there and they had practically no money. The old airplanes were
military. Some had floats on and some didn’t. A few had skis. Some didn’t
work. I had two guys, mechanics, and had the building there but it was so
old, you couldn’t close the door. For a couple of years, we were in trouble.
We were really having problems getting things going.
I want to tell you something here – I have had three strokes recently. The
last big one that I had, I can’t write, I can’t do anything, except I can talk!
(applause) Names are difficult for me to recall.
Clarence would try and make the money go by. He had about 20 people that
he tried to get enough money for people to live. It was the strangest
operation I ever saw in my life.
21
I thought, we just got to do a better job. Finally the hangars were built. We
built the first one ourselves (Terry: This hangar is currently the State Fish
and Game, the corrugated building that showed up on the railroad car and
there was no money to hire anyone to build it so the pilots and mechanics
put the hangar together and it is still there today.) We had a little bit of help
because there was an engineer down at the railroad. We made a deal with
him. He would come over and see us about every two weeks to see how we
were doing.
Then we got the new hangar but we didn’t have anything in it. We had no
chairs, shelves, files, no place to put things. At the time I was trying to get
rid of some of the old airplanes and get some better airplanes. Of course, I
needed some more money. Some of the guys that were flying up there had a
little more money from their outfits so we would buy a small airplane with
them for something. It was quite an independent operation.
It took about 5-6 years to get most of the small airplanes. We had the
Widgeons and we were getting Gooses by this time. We would go down to
New York or somewhere and fly one back here from the military. We
finally got six of them. We finally got rid of the Widgeons.
22
There was one guy down south of Anchorage, Dave Spencer, wanted his
Widgeon so bad. I was getting rid of the Widgeons. I did a bad thing for
him. He should have kept that Widgeon. He liked it so much. He flew
well. But anyway, I got rid of it and I’m sorry about that.
We went on and built up the Goose’s and everything got painted up finally.
That took a number of years. We were flying day and night especially
during the summer, watching the fish people. Finally toward the end of my
time there, we decided to build a Goose that would go a lot farther and do a
lot better job. That’s when we decided to build up N-780. I flew that for
about 2-1/2 years. It worked perfect!
Then OAS came in to be. I had enough time in so I left! (Applause)
Bob Richey
That’s a hard act to follow. Thanks, Theron. I have to admit that I feel
really humbled here in this group because I’m a new guy on the block.
These gentlemen have been around for many, many years. I know some of
their stories. I know some of the equipment.
23
I got my flying time out of San Diego (skip in tape) and picked that up at
_____________ Field out in Oklahoma. I had less than 200 hours when I
came up here. I came up in 1959. I hitch hiked on some diesel trucks up to
Seattle and watching those guys shifting gears, 15-fore, 5-speed main box,
3-speed brownie. I kept watching them and by the time I got to Seattle, I
could probably do it myself.
Then I flew up with PNA. PNA were flying Connies. I took the Goose (?;
shuttle?)on to Ketchikan and spent a couple days there and went into
Cordova and Anchorage. I caught the train and went to Fairbanks. I
checked with the University there for some additional training. I got out of
the Service. That’s when I started my training because we had 3 years to
pick something up on the GI-Bill. I figured that I already had one degree at
the time so I got my ticket – that was less than 200 hours.
I came up in 1960 to stay and then I didn’t use it for 5 years. I went to
school for another 3 years, got another degree at the University of Alaska
and was hired on for the summers. My summers then were at McKinley
Park. Some of you know the Eielson Visitor’s Center. I was there for 3
24
seasons. I headed for Kenai and was hired on as a wildlife aide and later on
as a biologist.
I didn’t start flying again. I hadn’t flown for 5 years. They were getting in a
bind there. They had Ave Thayer, and Will Troyer. They were getting in a
bind in 1965 so they sent me up to Anchorage to check with my first mentor,
Theron. He probably doesn’t remember this but he said, “alright, we’ll go
out.” He put me in a 185. I had started out in a Taylor Craft. I am still
amazed what a little 65 hp Taylor Craft would do. We were doing spins,
loops, etc. down in San Diego. Here we had this 185 and I probably didn’t
give Theron a very good ride. I spent 4-5 days with Theron in the 185’s and
180’s. He probably felt that I should settle back to a Cub.
About a month later I was trained on floats and I got checked out on floats
with Ray McNutt(??) there in Sterling. Then I went to Anchorage to get
checked out with Theron at Fish and Wildlife. I still remember, he took me
on the other side of the pond (Cook Inlet?) and he said, “Bob, pick out a lake
and let me see what you can do.” A little bit off the starboard corner I saw a
long lake and the wind looked like it was coming pretty much from the north
and that would be a straight in. I started to let down there and had it all
25
figured out as to what I was going to do. I was going to grease this on.
Theron said, “aw, just a minute, let me show you something. I’ve got the
controls.” He took over, and off to the right he goes and then he lands
crosswise in this narrow lake. He dropped it in over the grass and I
remember him pushing forward. He didn’t stub it but he sure stopped it. He
said, “this is what you can do on this stuff.” Here I had about a 2-mile lake
that I was going to land on. I’m sure he doesn’t remember that but I sure do.
I stayed in Kenai as most of you know, although they tried to ship me off
many times. The first time I was in the large hangar, across from the State
hangar, the Bureau of Land Management was in there with the Fish and
Wildlife Service. This was prior to OAS.
The BLM had some 180’s that they didn’t fly in the winter so we picked one
up for the Kenai. We flew wheel/skis in the winter and then went back to
floats on the Cub in the summer. I must admit Jerry and his crew is very
modest because they did, in those times, some tremendous modifications.
He gave us a wheel/ski Cub with oversize tires and special skis. When you
were on skis there was still about ¾ inch of tire so you had some control,
some brakes even on the ice. It was really beautiful.
26
A lot of modifications were done. We picked up the Borer prop on the first
plane that we had. We did a lot of, well experimenting. Kenai was so close
to Anchorage and we flew in to Anchorage frequently.
At that time, I was responsible for some oil and gas operations on the Kenai.
There were some Nodwell drilling sites that we had to get into and the only
way we could go in was to fly in on skis and at that particular time, they
were close to a figure “8” lake and I refused to go into it. I think I had 739
there which we had in Kenai for many, many years. At the time, the policy
was to change an engine every 1000 hours. I remember that particular plane,
we put in three different engines. I wouldn’t go into this lake even though I
had lots of hours in this plane.
I got into Anchorage and Jerry said, “let’s try out this new prop and see how
it works.” So Jerry put it on and I taxied out in Anchorage and it was just
phenomenal! I knew the bird well with the standard prop but it was
impressive. That late afternoon I went into this lake and checked on the
seismic crew and had no problem getting out of there. It was just really that
much difference.
27
They worked us a lot down there. They built up some beautiful wings on a
Cub years ago. It was too bad when OAS took over, because they took the
wings off. Unfortunately, we left the plane in Anchorage too long. I’m still
sick about that!
I had the opportunity to continue my training instruments and I kept on
working on my tickets in multi-engine and finally got checked out in the
Gooses and the Barons. I was fortunate enough to fly N-780, the turbine. I
was very fortunate to drive right seat on that.
--(end of tape #1) –
--(start of tape #2)—
28
Jim King
I was attending the University in Fairbanks in the late 1940’s. In 1951, I got
offered a job through the Dean’s Office to work for the Fish and Wildlife
Service for the summer. I didn’t have a summer plan so I decided that I
would do this. One thing lead to another and I wound up as a stream guard
in Kenai for the summer and that fall I went to a trainee position in
Fairbanks. I was working for an agent named Ray Woolford.
It was kind of interesting in a way, I never took a Civil Service Test. I
worked 34 years for the government and never took any of the tests that
people have to take nowadays.
In any event, we were doing a lot of winter trips out of Fairbanks and Ray
Woolford was a really capable pilot. The plane he used was an army surplus
L-1 Stinson, which was sort of a grand Super Cub. It had a 300-hp radial
engine but there were just two seats in it, fore and aft seats like a Cub.
Nobody had ski/wheels in those days. We had great big wooden skis with
metal sheathing under them and they didn’t turn very good. Backtaxiing
down the runway getting into position for take off, if you did it just right you
could blast the tail around and it would come around to a take off position.
29
If you didn’t do it just right then there were a number of things to do to get
that monster turned.
One of the things was to find a stick of wood and tie it under one ski so that
it would drag. The handiest thing, for the pilot, I quickly learned, was for
the passenger to get out and push on the tail while the pilot exercised the
engine. There would be clouds of snow and extra gear blowing away (very
refreshing at subzero temperatures). This was a great inducement for
becoming the pilot!
I started taking flying lessons in Fairbanks. I believe it was 1953 that I
checked out with Theron Smith. I had 100 hours in my logbook and was
authorized to do limited flying under the direction of Ray Woolford. I flew
until 1961 as a game management agent out of Fairbanks. I then went to
Bethel for a couple of years as refuge manager and then Hank Hansen, who
had developed the waterfowl project in Alaska, took a promotion to the
Nation’s Capitol.
I had been doing surveys. Part of our duties with the old management and
enforcement division was to do air surveys, duck banding, and things like
30
that. I got involved in waterfowl that way. After Hansen left I did the
waterfowl survey program for 20 years and used a variety of airplanes. I
flew government planes for 30 years.
One of the planes that I used for a number of years was the standard Beaver.
Those of you that have flown Beavers know it had three tanks in it plus two
wing-tip tanks. You had to switch tanks for the three fuselage tanks and if
you didn’t switch in time the fuel pressure would go down and a little red
light on the panel about as big as your little finger nail would go on and this
would tell you that you needed to switch.
Well, my job was to look out the window and look for ducks. Periodically, I
would miss this little light when it would go on because I was looking out
the window and the engine would quit. It would be a little nerve wracking at
100 feet. I think though, I had good advice in doing low-level surveys. One
of the things that we learned to do was do what we needed to do at cruise
speed. I always did that and I never did crash when the engine quit. I came
in one time and told Jerry Lawhorn about my problem with this little red
light. The next time I came back for my airplane, there was a light bulb on
the post there between the door and the windshield and that light was so
31
bright that even if I had my eyes shut I could feel the heat! It went off like a
bolt of lightning. I never let the engine quit again.
Another thing that bothered me was when I was flying in Southeast. You
could buy gas anywhere in Southeast on floats. You taxied up to a floating
dock. With the Beaver, to fill the wing-tip tanks, you had to climb up on top
and it could get pretty exciting. I was in Ketchikan one time and I was on
the outside wingtip filling the tank and a seine boat went by. The wing
started going up and down about 8 feet. I got one finger inside the gas filler
hole there trying to hang on and hold the hose with the other hand.
I complained to Jerry about the lack of things to hang on to on top of the
Beaver. So, when I came back, he had this neat little pair of goat horns
screwed into a couple of rings on the top. I thought that was pretty neat! I
flew a couple of trips with these goat horns on top. Then he decided that the
tail was fluttering or something, so they had to go. Those were a couple of
nice things that Lawhorn did for me.
Later on, I started flying the turbine Beaver. The first trip that I made with it
we were looking at a lot of the refuge areas or the areas that are now refuges.
32
We made about a 3-week trip from Tetlin all the way to Kotzebue looking at
what are now the refuges.
Jerry was in the back seat telling me how to run this thing because I didn’t
know anything about turbine engines and the fuel system was kind of
cranky. Anytime I had a question, I would just holler at Jerry. Later on, one
of the things about that airplane was that it was put together beautifully but
no one ever put an operator’s manual together on it that you could refer to
when you got worried about things.
I had a 7-digit operator’s manual which was Jerry Lawhorn’s phone number!
I considered that my security blanket. I never left home without it. I called
Jerry on weekends, at night, early in the morning and whenever something
happened that I didn’t understand. He seemed to always be there.
Another feature of the aircraft operation was I think they probably got
almost as many WWII radios as they did surplus engines. We had a radio
system that wouldn’t quit. I think there were l50 or so stations, in
automobiles, vessels, offices and in wives’ kitchens. Ray Tremblay’s wife
operated a radio from her kitchen for a number of years there in McGrath
33
and she talked to people in the air. I remember she would apologize if she
had to go out to the store or something and be off the air for a little while.
She took good care of us. Millie Pinkham at Tok was equally devoted.
At any rate, these radios really worked and most of the time, we could talk to
the hangar here in Anchorage from anywhere in Alaska. Sometime those
HF radios would get messed up with something – I don’t know – maybe
shooting stars or sunspots or something. The nice feature of that was there
again, for those of us that were specializing in other things besides flying, it
was nice to be able to call somebody when you had an airplane problem.
I think at least three times when I felt like I was in dire straights, I called up
and talked to Theron. One of the times, I was somewhere over the Yukon
Delta with the Beaver and it apparently swallowed a valve and the engine
started running really rough. I got over the Yukon River I didn’t want to be
over the Yukon – I wanted to be over the Kuskokwim and get back to
Bethel. After I got on the River, I called in and Theron answered. He was
in the air. We discussed what might be the problem with the plane. I don’t
remember where he was going but he monitored me all the way and I got
back to Bethel with the thing.
34
Another time, was with the first amphib-float plane that came to Alaska, a
180 Fish and Wildlife plane. It had some kind of electrical gadgetry in the
floats to bring the wheels up and down. It hadn’t been really perfected. It
needed tapping or kicking or something every now and then to get it to
work. Sometimes you couldn’t get the wheels up after take off so then you
would have to land on an airport and sometimes you couldn’t get the wheels
down so then you would have to look around for the nearest water. That
happened fairly regularly. So it often took an extra landing before you got
where you wanted to be. I never did figure out any way to kick these
switches in the air.
There was this one time out of Bethel that I got in the air and got the thing
stuck; one set of wheels up on one side and down on the other. That
happened right after I took off with a full load of gas. I got on the radio and
described my situation. I got hold of Smith and Lawhorn and we talked
about the problem. They got the books out and looked at the possibilities. I
remember the first thing they wanted to do was to make sure I knew which
side the wheels were down on and which side they were up because of the
mirrors on the wings that looked on the opposite side. We checked that out.
We decided to get rid of the fuel on the side that didn’t have any wheels.
35
I had to fly around for a couple hours while we hashed this over. I finally
landed on the runway there in Bethel. It really wasn’t a bad landing but the
thing was it was so neat when you had something like that happen, to be able
to contact the guys in the shop and they were always there. I don’t think
OAS has been able to duplicate that service.
There were other instances. One year I took off from Hughes in a Pacer. I
just got underway pretty good. It was cold (-40 Below). There was a pop
and the windshield split. I called up and talked to Smith again. He said,
“well, you ought to know there is some question about whether the airplane
will fly if the windshield comes out.” So, that was very comforting. I was
able to get back to Hughes.
Really, it was a neat relationship. I think those of us that were primarily
biologists or enforcement agents or whatever, we had other things to think
about besides the aviation thing. (My job description said I was a pilot
operating airplanes in remote areas but my performance evaluation never
said anything about the flying. We were evaluated on other things in
relation to other people who did not take on the responsibility of piloting.)
The old Aircraft Division gave us such really wonderful support. I think that
36
was something that was really gratifying in my career to be able to devote
time to other things and still have that support. (We didn’t have time to keep
up with aviation literature, we needed to keep up with wildlife literature).
Smith used to send articles around and little items for us to study. He just
kept us going. It is really neat to see Theron and Jerry Lawhorn here today
and everyone else. This was a grand period of time, going back to the
1950’s when we all operated together. Cal Lensink was part of that so I’ll
now turn the mike over to Cal.
Cal Lensink
Smitty checked me out in the 180. I was heading out to Bethel so I didn’t
need the airplane in the winter and then the next spring, my refresher course
was to fly to Nome and pick up an airplane. Smitty and I landed at Nome
and then got in the wheel airplane and flew back to Bethel. I landed at
Nome reasonably well and at Bethel reasonably well but progressively my
real flying deteriorated and I came very close to ground looping the 180 and
I don’t think I have ever been on wheels again since! It was strictly a float
operation out at Bethel.
37
In that area, summertime float flying was probably as safe a flying as you
could get in the world. There were no trees to run into to so if you could get
the plane off the water, you would really be home free. There is water
almost everywhere so even if an engine would quit you would be awfully
unlucky if you couldn’t plant it in the nearest pond.
I worked a deal to have another pilot or one of the mechanics fly the plane
out for me. I didn’t want to come into Anchorage to pick up an airplane. I
would bring it back in the fall if necessary. But in the spring, coming into
Anchorage, the weather was frequently bad and I could get stuck in
Anchorage for 2 weeks at a time.
Smitty came out with the plane one year and gave me my checkride. We
flew out to the coast and it was really nice weather. The water was calm and
I came in and landed at Old Chevak, just a little too hot. I barely touched it
down, really nice and smooth, it bounced and touched down again really
nice and smooth and finally on the third one, I got it stopped. Smitty’s only
comment was “three very good landings, I suggest you start working for
one.”
38
Of all the check pilots I was with, Smitty was probably the best because he
could make you feel comfortable in an airplane. For some reason or the
other, some of the check pilots would just make you uncomfortable and
uncertain. I always felt like Theron was able to put across what I had to do
and I was fine with his instructions. Actually, I was a very limited pilot in
that virtually all my flying was on the Yukon-Delta which I indicated was
really the safest, particularly in the summer time. I tried to avoid all
adventures in an airplane.
Tom Wardleigh
I got interested in aviation very early in life and was an apprentice mechanic
at Boeing Field for Pan American Airlines while I was going to high school.
During WWII, I was in the Navy as a mechanic. I went to work at Kenmore
Air Harbor immediately after WWII and learned to fly there. I feel pretty
privileged to know some great people. In the course of working there in the
State of Washington, they ran a Sea Bee up on a log in a night landing in a
river. In an effort to repair, through great good fortune, we had bought five
wrecked Seabees all in one pile after a windstorm.
We took a look at the State’s airplane and we made a reasonable bid to
restore it. It was pretty badly scrunched. We realized that if we cut it off at
39
the chine line and across the hull we had another tail that would just fit right
on there. We did that and by gosh the job turned out just way better than
anyone could have imagined. Instead of a month to repair it, we had it out in
about 4 days and instead of the bid amount we told the state pilot, that we’d
just bill him for the time and materials because it was about one tenth of
what we bid. Of course, he was pretty delighted.
I asked him what the chance was of getting a cushy job like he had, working
for a government entity instead of slaving away 7 days a week, 12 hours a
day like I was doing. He said, “there is a fellow in town that hires pilots
sometimes and I would suggest that you talk to him. His name is Clarence
Rhode.”
Well, I made an appointment and I met with Clarence. We had a discussion
in the middle of the night one night and the upshot was that I showed up
here in Anchorage and met Theron Smith and went to work in September
1951.
This was possibly the luckiest thing that ever happened to me in my whole
life because I learned a lot, had a lot of fun, met folks like Jim Branson. I
40
am telling you he is one of the most courageous people in the entire world.
He flew an awful lot with me in the Widgeon and neither one of us knew
how the trip would end.
It was a wonderful time because it was like family. If you went to McGrath,
you stayed with the folks in McGrath whether it was Lyman Reynoldson, or
Ray Tremblay or whomever might be there. If you went to Dillingham, you
stayed with a family in Dillingham. It was just like a great big extended
family.
Some of the happiest things that I can remember is having a Goose either
down on the Pacific side or in Cook Inlet and meeting the research vessel.
They would give you a garbage can of fresh caught king crab or a great big
halibut or a bunch of salmon. On the way home you would just call on the
radio and say, “hey, I’ve got food on board, let’s have a party.” All the folks
that worked in the hangar, the mechanics, secretaries and all would bring
their families and we would share a seafood dinner and everybody would
bring a dish of Jell-O or something. It was just a golden period in my life. I
look back on it just in awe that we could do so much with the few people
and such little money.
41
We always wondered what these biologists were thinking about. Jim
mentioned that they had other things to think about other than flying and
some of us in the aviation business wondered what in the world that might
be! One of the things they thought about was hauling canoes around for
duck banding and waterfowl work.
We had some creative mechanics in those days and they looked around at
the parts, pieces and miscellaneous that we had on hand. They took a Pacer
fuselage that was setting in the corner and took Super Cub wings and a tail
that happened to be lying around and some Mono-coupe floats that were off
of an expired Mono-coupe and somewhere came up with an Apache engine
and prop. They put this little menagerie together and it actually looked
pretty good. You could put two 17-ft Grumman canoes on it and fly them
anywhere you wanted to go. It just flew like a dream.
We had one of the field biologists/pilots in town and he wanted a float plane
rating. We got him going in this little creature. We called it a Sub-Cub.
Everything was great and it was a Sunday. This fellow wanted to get back
home with the airplane as soon as he could so I called up one of our really
42
good and understanding friends over at the PA, Dick Poit(??). He was the
office chief for the whole group. I said, “hey, Dick, any chance you can
come out on your day off and give a rating ride to a float plane pilot?” He
said he would be glad to and he came out and they took off from the dock
and went and flew and came back and tied up. It was the only airplane on
the whole waterfront at Lake Hood. Dick was just heaping praise on this
Pacer. He said “that’s the best flying little Pacer I have ever seen in my
life.” About that time, another Pacer came in and taxied up. I tried to wave
them off but wasn’t successful. Dick took one look at the long winged
airplane and the short winged airplane. One had a considerably more
impressive propeller than the other and he said, “you know, I think you have
done it to me again.”
We use to worry not nearly so much about conforming to rules as we did to
getting the job done. These folks have described that pretty well. If you
thought the equipment was good enough and you thought the weather
conditions were suitable, you just went ahead and did the work. That was a
wonderful way to operate. I think our directions from the Juneau Office,
speaking for Smitty and all of us, we got our budget and we got a Christmas
43
card and that was about it. If you didn’t break the iron and you didn’t have a
problem, you didn’t get much interference from the administrative side.
I remember the first week on the job, Elsie Hager was the head lady in those
days and she gave me a long narrow tablet. It had four colored pages in it
and you were to buy things with it. This was great. I could figure out how
to put in the vendor’s name and sign it.
We were having trouble with the Goose brakes. They were the old
automotive-style brakes that didn’t work worth a damn at best and they
worked even less than that when they were wet. This slick fellow came in
with 12 sets of Mallard brakes, cheap, at $1,000 a pair. So I wrote him a
Standard Form 44 for $12,000. The administrative office in those days was
in Portland and I don’t know how Frank Rigert ever did it but he was
standing by my desk with a scowl the next day. It seems the limit for me to
write a 44 was $500. After a lengthy discussion, he realized that my
responsibility was trying to maintain airplanes and that I didn’t have any
problem at all. His responsibility was paying the appropriate bill and he did
indeed have a problem!
44
In a few moments of your life you look back and you really reflect on certain
things and one of them was our magic Lear-T 30 radios where you let the
antennae out about 63 or 64 turns. It worked that particular day and the
voice on the other end was Dave Spencer. Dave had the Piper airplane of
sort. It had an open cowling. It didn’t have the closed later model Super
Cub type cowling. This particular airplane had the cylindars sticking right
out in the fresh air. He had been flying along down near Skilak Lake and the
engine ran more poorly and more poorly and he finally landed. He was
wondering if somebody could come and convince this engine that it ought to
run. Smitty said, “no problem, we’ll take the Gullwing and a couple of fire
pots and some tools and see what’s the matter.”
We went down and landed and taxied up right beside the Cub on this lake.
The Cub was sitting there, just like a duck on a pond, beautiful. It was just
colder than cold. It was like –30 degrees. After we got out of the Gullwing,
it kind of shuffled its shoulders and shuddered and sank in the over flow.
Now it is a little over knee deep in water and snow and it is rapidly
becoming a permanent part of the top of the Lake. I guess I’ll just let your
imagination picture this.
45
I put on a pair of snowshoes and Smitty stepped on behind me and the two
of us hiked over to a cabin on one pair of snowshoes. I didn’t have a clue
but Smitty knew what to do and gosh, in less than three days later we were
out of there! It was absolutely a wonderful learning experience.
Along the way I made friends with a fellow named Jack Jefford who worked
over at the CAA. I guess one of the ways that I made friends with him was
we had a lightly modified Pacer parked at the Beaver airport up on the
Yukon River and a requirement to bring it back to Anchorage and adjust its
attitude a little bit. I talked Jack into going in with the C-123 and loading
the Pacer and bringing it to town. He did all those things graciously. In
those days, the cooperation between agencies was just wonderful. He did it
without charging us anything. It was a good exercise for the airplane and on
and on.
In late 1958, we had been searching for Clarence Rhode who was missing.
All of us turned out who were working there at the time and all the airplanes
turned out and we really conducted the best search that we knew how to do.
46
We got back from the search without results, of course. I think you all
know that.
I got this strange phone call from a fellow, Jack Jefford at CAA. He said,
“Tom, those idiots in Washington have decided we can’t fly the DC-3 single
pilot any more and we got three DC-3’s and three pilots and that makes it a
little hard – could any of your guys come and be co-pilots for a little while?”
It was freeze up and we couldn’t fly floats, we couldn’t fly skis, kind of dull
days so I went over myself and Gene Stolz, and Emit Soldin went over and
we just filled in as co-pilots in the DC-3’s. At the end of a relatively brief
period, Jack sat on the corner of the desk and it was about time for me to go
back to work at Fish and Wildlife.
The Statehood Act had been signed by the President and nobody really knew
what the division of airplanes, facilities, and responsibilities would be
between the new state government and the existing Federal Fish and
Wildlife. Jack had a beguiling way about him. He sat on the corner of the
desk and he said, “you know, Tom, sign this piece of paper right here and
you will get a transfer in grade from the Department of the Interior to the
Department of Commerce and you get to hang your hat on that hat rack
47
instead of going back across the street.” That’s what I did. I never looked
back.
I just felt I had a wonderful family to go to and in fact I did go back and
Smitty was kind enough to loan us a Goose. Of all things, you just go and
borrow a Goose? From one agency to another? Well, yes, there were a
couple of Congressmen missing on a flight to Juneau – Begich and Boggs.
We borrowed a Goose and in a cooperative effort between the Fish and
Wildlife and the CAA, we did a part of the search. That didn’t work either
but we tried awfully hard.
In any case, I transferred to the CAA which ultimately became the FAA but
I never felt that my family thought I was gone. I always could go back over
and was warmly welcomed and it was just a wonderful time in my life, a
wonderful opportunity to learn from people.
Ray Woolford was mentioned earlier. Ray was a great pilot. I worked with
Ray –break in tape here – end of Tom’s presentation.
48
John Sarvis
The next person would be Dave Spencer but Dave’s health is poor right now
but maybe there are people here that could refer to Dave and the flying that
he did. Dick Hensel, can we start with you?
Dick Hensel
I may begin this discussion but I think most everyone here could better
speak to the subject of one Mr. Dave Spencer. Dave would have liked to be
here this afternoon and he hinted earlier that his presence would be possible,
but his wife, Eloise, telephoned me this morning with word that he just
wasn’t up to it because of his deteriorating health.
By way of background, Dave graduated from Penn State with a degree in
Forestry in the late 1930's. The advent of WWII had him enlisting in the
US Navy wherein he soon became a flight instructor training young pilots to
fly PBY’s. Dave returned to the temporary job he had with the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service before the war and was later assigned, full time to a
refuge down in Florida. His primary responsibilitywas to follow and
inventory migratory waterfowl from the Canadian Provinces southward into
Central America. In this he excelled.
49
Theron mentioned earlier his love for the Widgeon amphib and this same
love was shared equally by Dave Spencer. A remarkable story that comes to
mind concerns the time Dave was instructed to pick up a surplus Widgeon at
a Tulsa, Oklahoma airport where it had been overhauled and modified for
Service use. He and a colleague, who may have been the Aircraft Director
from the Washington Office at the time, I can’t recall, began to taxi at a
pretty good clip, when they had a hell of a time keeping the aircraft aligned
with the median. Words were exclaimed to the effect this plane wasn’t
ready for this X Navy pilot to fly so the plane was quickly parked and shut
down. In the process of the overhaul, mechanics inadvertently criss-crossed
the rudder peddle cables.
To go on, Dave served as a flyway biologist until around 1948 and at that
point, Clark Salyer the Service’s Director, asked Dave to fly the same
Widgeon, Number 703, which incidentally, I think is presently graveyarded
someplace in King Salmon, to Anchorage. And situate himself in Kenai as
the first Manager of the Kenai National Moose Range. At that time,
poaching, mostly by miners, was added reason to station Dave at this
location. And so, he along with his new bride Eloise, settled in Kenai and
began keeping house so to speak in a small uninsulated cabin with a single
50
barrel stove as the only source of heat. As Dave tells the story, he spent
most of his first winter there on the Kenai cutting firewood. At the time
there was no highway connecting Anchorage or Seward but this soon
became a reality along with Clark SalyerDAve’s becoming elevated to the
Refuge Supervisor for all of Alaska’s federal refuge units.
I’d like to pass this mike to others because much of the classical work that
Dave did in the early 1950’s, well before my time, was certainly precedent
setting, as for example, the development of waterfowl sampling methods.
Jim King can best elaborate on this aspect of Daves career.
Jim King
One of the things about Dave Spencer was that he wasn’t known for
verbosity. In fact, we called him “silent Dave.” It wasn’t until not long ago,
it sort of emerged out of the woodwork that Dave was the key in designing
the Continental Waterfowl Survey program that depends on their aerial
transects, that have now been done clear across North America for 50 years
or more. Dave, whose degree in college was in forestry, was one of the
people assigned to the Prairies when they were first starting to figure out
how to do these transect counts.
51
They had established transects but it was Dave with his forestry training that
knew how to do a little bit of statistics so that he could segment the transects
and analyze them as a simple random sample. That system which he
devised in about 1947 or 1948 has stood the test of time now for 50 years
and we still do it every year. The statisticians will never agree that that was
the correct use of random sampling because the transects aren’t random.
They are drawn so they are easy to fly but regardless, that’s the information
by which we have been managing ducks now for half a century. I think the
system works because we have about as many ducks now as we did in the
1950’s when the whole thing was first put together.
Dave has been an important person. He started aerial muskox surveys after
he got here. He started moose surveys with the airplane. Perhaps more
important than that was Dave had been a student of Aldo Leopold which he
never talked about very much but he knew him well and had spent time in
the shack where Leopold wrote his books. He worked with Olaus Murie in
the Rockies and he went to college with the Craighead brothers.
When Dave came to Alaska, people were trying to think of how to get some
pulp mills going so they could take advantage of all the trees that were just
52
going to waste and how to dam up the rivers and get some electricity. The
politicians were trying to get rid of the Kenai Moose Range so that
homesteaders could use it. To a very real extent, I think that the background
that Dave had when he came, was responsible for people starting to think
about additional refuges and wilderness areas and protection of the wild
areas.
He really influenced the way Alaska is today and while doing this, he put
together a superlative team of refuge managers. Dick Hensel is one. Then
when the mood swung a little toward developing more refuges in Alaska,
Dave trained refuge managers. We were the ones that knew where these
new refuges ought to be and the refuge managers put together a 60 million-acre
package of waterfowl refuges that President Jimmy Carter gets the
credit for establishing in 1980. (Dave Spencer had us ready for this).
I thought maybe I would mention Hank Hansen and Chuck Evans as a
couple of the old timers that I talked to in the last year. The Regional Office
has me doing some oral history interviews with some of the old timers. Last
winter I was going to be in the state of Washington and I called up Hank
Hansen and made arrangements to get together with him on a certain date in
53
January. I wanted to try and record some of his memories about when he
came to Alaska in the mid 1950’s and set up the waterfowl program which
really hasn’t been modified a whole lot. It is one of the programs that has
more continuity than practically anything that the Service does.
Hank invited me to come and stay with them. They live in Oak Harbor,
Washington. A few days before it was time to go, I thought I would call up
and just confirm the time that I was going to get there. I had trouble getting
through on the telephone and when I finally did get through, I found out that
Hank had just had a triple by-pass heart operation but his wife, Doris, told
me to come on that they wanted me there. So, five days after he had a triple
by-pass, Hank Hansen gave me his memories of setting up the waterfowl
transects in Alaska. He is doing pretty good now. He also has diabetes and,
so far, is conquering his health problems. I talk to him on the phone every
now and then. He is interested in what’s going on up here.
Another person that I talked to down there was Chuck Evans who is retired
in Lacy, Washington. He spent a lot of time on the Rampart Dam studies
and did a lot of flying on that. Chuck was one of the pilots that flew
airplanes in China before WWII over the Himalaya’s, high altitude freight
54
hauling, etc. He said he was writing up his memories of that. Chuck spent
quite a few years here and is now retired and doing fine.
55
Dick Hensel
Two thoughts in this regard, one in reference to Bob Burkholder and
another, Will Troyer. It would be more appropriate for Ray Tremblay to
talk about Burkholder as he was directly involved in a bizarre mishap
concerning aerial hunting of predator wolves. Will Troyer seasonally now
resides in Arizona and lives in Cooper Landing during the summer and fall
he enjoys his favorite pass time hunting Ptarmigan and grouse. I had the
profound pleasure, and you might say, the agony, of working with Will at
Kodiak and later in Anchorage from where he directed the wilderness land
classification studies for Alaska Wildlife Refuges during the 1970's. Will
went on to transfer to the National Park Service, and continued as a pilot
even after severely crashing a Supercub at the Denali Park landing strip from
becoming cought in a wicked downdraft. More to the point, this incident
relates to the time Will gave me my first flying lesson in Kodiak when at the
time I think he had only something like 50 hours or so of flying time. We
sorely wanted to get into the flying business and decided to organize a local
flying club which led to the purchase and joint ownership of a float equipped
T-Craft, an ideal machine to learn how to fly.
56
It didn’t have a starter and had to be propped by hand. My debut as a most
naive student began when he flew solo from Long Lake, where the plane
was moored at the municipal float pond, to the city boat harbor where he
was to pick me up one evening after work. After landing in an ourtside
channel and taxiing to a wooden ramp provided for the float planes inside
the harbor, he exited the plane and we pulled it high onto the ramp, which
was real slick and slippery with algae. His instruction was for me to access
the prop by way of the right float while he occupied the left side seat and
then, when the engine fired, I was to quickly enter and seat myself by his
side. Following through, I attempted to prop the engine only to have the
plane slip off the ramp into the water. I returned to the rear and pulled the
plane back onto the ramp then went forward and made another attempt to
start the plane to no avail. Observing these antics, uttering some remarks,
then getting out of the plane he asked that I hold the tail to keep the plane
stationary while he propped the engine and, upon starting I was to quickly
make my way via the left float into the aircraft.
(Original from recording--- I got hold of the tail of the plane, he walks out
on the end of the float, props it, it slides off the ramp, the plane is going, I’m
riding the float, I get in and Troyer is not there! I look out the window and
57
he is swimming. He is swimming towards the ramp. I thought, “oh my
God, what am I going to do.” I didn’t know anything about flying the plane.
I pushed in the throttle. Here was this T-Craft splashing across the boat
harbor with all these fishermen leaning over the rail wondering what in the
hell was going on. Finally I got the thing stopped. I climbed out onto the
float and here is Will just getting out of the water. I said, “well, Will, what
do I do next?” He said, “paddle the plane back here.” So I paddled and
paddled and got the thing turned around and he said “o.k., that’s your first
lesson. I’m going to go get some dry cloths on and I’ll come back and give
you a second lesson.” )
What happened next is that the engine started, I entered the aircraft now
moving at above idle power, while Will fell off the float into the boat harbor.
While he was swimming ashore I was frantically trying to stop the aircraft
and being totally unfamiliar with procedures I pushed the throttle inward
rather than out and the plane abruptly accelerated. Luckily I stopped the
engine after striking the master switch then stepped onto the float about the
time Will sttod erect, wringing wet, on the ramp. I proceeded to paddle
ashorte while at the time commotion attracted a number of fisherman
spectators peering from seiners moored nearby, and who no doubt were
58
wondering what these clowns would be doijng next. Upon getting situated
once again upon the ramp, I recall Will remarking “OK, I’ll take the truck,
go home and change my clothes, come back and give you your second
lesson”.
Now Tremblay may want to relate the story with Bob Burkholder having to
do with an aerial wolf hunt.
Ray Tremblay
Which wolf hunt? There were about six or seven of them!
Do any of you know Burkholder? Have you heard of him? You got to
understand that this guy had a mission and his mission was to kill wolves
and nothing else mattered. The airplane was a tool to accomplish this. I was
in McGrath and he would come over because we had wolf problems there.
Normally in any of our wolf operations, these were all Fish and Wildlife
guys. We did shoot wolves in those days to get rid of them. Normally I did
the flying and had the shooter do the shooting. With Burkholder, he made
me the shooter and he did the flying.
59
It was an adventure. The only time that the needle and the ball (instruments
that line up in smooth flying) were together was when they were passing
each other! He could track wolves like no other person. He would get on a
wolf track and he would follow that thing through caribou tracks and every
thing else until he would find that wolf. It was about 40 degrees below zero
and we were out chasing wolves. We finally found this wolf and he said,
“kill it.”
Normally we would shoot out the right window but we decided it was easier
to shoot out the left window. It did work pretty good. So, I gave it a try.
We had a 12-guage model 12 pump. We were careful to never put the shell
in the chamber until we had the muzzle out the side of the window. I put the
muzzle out the window and I could not feed a shell into the chamber. It just
wouldn’t go. It is 40 below zero and the thing was all froze up.
Burkholder was going crazy because we can’t get this wolf killed. Finally I
told him what had happened and he said, “well, feed in one shell at a time.”
So I took a shell and I put it in there and at this time, I had to bring it inside
the plane to do this because my hands were all frozen. I pulled the gun
inside and I put the shell in and I slid it forward and it went off. I did have it
60
pointed out. I want to tell you that three of the pellets – one hit the ball dead
center! This thing went off in his ear. No ear phones on. Now he is livid!
We landed. He said, “you don’t know anything about a shot gun, let me
show you.” I said, “Bob, it is frozen.” It was frozen with the firing pin
sticking out. That is what happened. When I slid it forward, it jammed it
and it set it off.
We tried thawing it out but we could never get it thawed out. He said, “we
got to get that wolf!” We went up again and I actually shot that by putting
the shell in the chamber and as we came over the wolf, I would slide the
thing forward and we got the wolf! Now that is dedication.
--(end of Tape #2)—
--(start of Tape #3)--
61
Tom Wardleigh
We had a Cub that had been involved in a problem and it was up at Gulkana
on a flat bed truck. I asked Burkholder if he would be willing to drive the
truck back down if we flew him up. He indicated that he would be willing to
do that so we piled him in a Pacer and flew him to Gulkana. He jumped in
the flat bed and there was a whole Cub wing, fuselage, motor, the whole
thing on the back of the flat bed.
He got the flat bed started up and vigorously backed it in to a snow bank and
took off at high speed down the road for Anchorage. Well, when he backed
it up, he kinked the tail pipe which broke the exhaust pipe up by the muffler.
As he was driving down the road, the heat got the flat bed on fire but he is
making 65 toward Anchorage with the Cub burning off the truck. He got a
hat trick in one day.
62
John Sarvis
I will tell a Will Troyer/Dick Hensel story. It’s just a little different than
flying but I kind of relate to these guys. They were doing bear studies on
Kodiak Island and at that time we weren’t using helicopters. They had these
padded traps. They would go and set these traps out and they would trap a
bear occasionally. They would then tranquilize the bears and the way they
did this was they had a tranquilizer on the end of a jab pole. After they had
the bear in the trap, they would walk up and jab the bear and tranquilize it.
One day they were out checking their traps – this is how I heard the story
now – and sure enough there was a bear and they go up to jab the bear.
They sneak up there, jab the bear in the butt with their stick and low and
behold the bear jumps up and runs off and they look around and there is
another bear that is in the trap!
Another one I want to tell is when I first met both Jim King and Cal Lensink
in 1971. I had gone to work for the Fish and Wildlife Service in
Washington, D.C. I eventually realized my mistake so I got farther west. I
was working in a branch of the Wilderness Studies. This was the time they
were starting to consider establishing more refuges and parks, etc. in Alaska.
63
Jim and Cal were in D.C. They were there to testify about establishing these
lands. What they were saying earlier about Dave Spencer, also applies to
these two and I hold a lot of gratitude for the work they did.
There were people that wanted to establish refuges but these guys knew,
from flying all over the state for many years, where the good waterfowl
places were, and where the wildlife places were. Anytime you actually put
lines on a map and figure out the sizes and shapes of these places, these two
guys were in Washington doing a lot of work on that. Most of the people in
Washington had no idea about Alaska and where the wildlife and waterfowl
were. Jim and Cal had a lot to do with these selections for establishment of
refuges, parks, etc.
Terry Smith
I was in a unique position to watch literally hundreds of check rides and
advice sessions, you might say. It was interesting to watch procedures that
are used to this day molded and changed to fit the concept of the low level
survey work and the wildlife management that went on. You knew that this
was the conceptual stage of some of this because it continued to change.
64
As folks came in, they would get in a 180 or a Widgeon or a Goose and head
off and go do their thing.
The low-level work and the ground reference maneuvering that took place
was not very well conceptualized at that point. There hadn’t been a lot of it
done. The military had done a lot of things with target focus and things like
that but low level light airplane work across the country was a normal thing
to do. You would watch as the training took place and having the airplane
stabilize when you would go by something.
Dad, Ray and Tom, they would all work to make this as safe and it could
possibly be done. One of the things that came out of that, of course, is
something that is a benchmark today, especially if you are secondarily listed
in the aviation aspect of what you are doing right now.
The Bob Burkholder syndrome of what’s on the ground is all important as
long as the airplane stays together long enough for you to get to it or get it.
That’s the case. Your job is not necessarily as a professional pilot flying the
airplane. Things like a stabilized airplane for any type of a visual pass, you
don’t have the airplane decelerating and changing configurations coming up
on a kill or the dead animal that you are looking at. You have the airplane
65
stabilized just short of that so when you go by it, everything stays the same.
You got 20 inches on the 185 and you are set up. That way it is not
Christmas when two seconds later you are done with your viewing and you
look back inside and wholly cats!! – there is no airspeed, there is no nothing
and it’s faced uphill.
It was very interesting to grow up during a period where a lot of those things
were being tested, changed just slightly, and made into the very core of what
we use today in low level survey work.
One time after a long, long day on a marine mammal study on a sea otter
survey, one of the observers in the back made some comment about he
didn’t realize you could fly an airplane that low that long. Dad’s response
was “yes, you can fly an airplane real close to the ground for a long period
of time as long as you stay parallel.”
Ray Tremblay
I want to tell one more here on my good friend, Theron.
We did a lot of flying together all over. This guy taught me a lot. He taught
me on instrument flying – don’t only look at your instrument chart but when
66
you are making an approach, have your VFR chart there so you know where
the hills are and you are not just making this blind approach into something
especially when you are going in for the first time.
We made sea otter surveys out at Amchitka, and walrus surveys between
Nome and the Russian coast. I remember this particular time, I was doing
the flying and he was doing the navigating and the biologists were doing the
counting of the walrus and we were flying at 500 feet going between the
Alaska coast and the Russian coast. We had been advised not to get too
close to the Russian coast because we didn’t have any authority.
So, Theron is doing all this navigating, doing this for 6, 7, 8, 9 hours and
trying to keep an idea of where we are over this open water and some ice
and whatever. He was doing a pretty good job. We didn’t have GPS’s and
all that good stuff. We were doing this flying at 300 feet and then we started
getting into fog. We didn’t want to pull up at that point because we were
near the end of the survey.
We still had some surveying to do so we stayed under the fog as long as we
could. Then Theron said turn north now and fly for so long and I did. Then
67
he told me to turn east again and we will start in that direction. So going
along, not only in the fog but we’re at 300 feet and pretty soon, we are over
land and we are flying over some kind of a town or a village and there are
people down there and then we realized we were over the Russian coast!
Theron told me to just keep flying straight because we don’t want to make
like that we are doing something that we shouldn’t be doing here. We were
flying along and we had three biologists. Pretty soon, here was a MIG right
along side of us. Theron said, “now just keep flying, don’t pay any attention
to it.” This MIG would come out from behind then it would disappear then
come right along top of us and then it would just make this turn and
disappear again.
We kept looking at the international signals. If he wags a wing this means
we got foul or he is not responsible for our safety or whatever it was. Now,
of course, we are starting to take pictures of this. We got some great MIG
pictures. This last past, whatever he did, he came around and he came right
across the front of us. He had everything hanging down. He had his brakes
down, his flaps, his wheels, and all. He was just practically stalling. I
remember my first thought was that he was such a little guy. I thought they
68
were supposed to be big. Just his head poking up and now he is taking
pictures of us.
We had Red Dodge’s DC-3 and it had this painting of this naked girl on the
side of it that said “Hello Dolly.” That’s what he was taking pictures of!
When he went by us, we were at 200 feet. He finally decided that he had
better start flying and he poured the coals to that thing and he went right
down almost into the water. Water was actually spraying from behind this
MIG when he was trying to get his air speed enough to fly away. Theron
and I both said, “man, if he goes into the water, we’re both in deep yogurt.”
Anyway, we made it.
Theron is a wealth of knowledge. One of the things that you got to have in
your flying career is a guy like Theron and a guy like Tom. I know that
Tom, making me do it, says, “let’s go out and do a check ride.” To me, a
check ride should be more than just going up and doing a few stalls and
doing a few turns, etc. What Tom and Theron did was get out and have you
do what you do in your operation and let them see how you do it.
69
Tom took me out and wanted me to show him how I did a wildlife survey,
following a trapline trail. I told him that I would get about 500 feet. He
told me to do that then he said, “why don’t you slow it down until you think
the thing is going to stall and then fly.” So I did that and then he said, “now
start making a turn and do the same thing, that is, get it to just where you
think it is going to stall and recover.” I did that. Finally he said, “do you
really think it is safe practicing stalls at 500 feet?” I said, “hell no, I don’t
like it at all!” He said, “then why in the hell are you doing it?” I said,
“cause you told me to!” He said, “look, when you are the pilot in command,
if you don’t feel like doing something, don’t do it!” Theron was the same
way.
Theron Smith
All those last years, most of my stories have gone away. My son, Terry, was
3 years. I remember one time when he was about 4 years, I had a Goose up
on a lake and was getting some stuff out of it and had the engine running and
he was sitting along side of me and I heard the engine roar up a little bit. I
looked around and he is standing up in the chair, pulling on the power.
70
When he was a young kid, he couldn’t look out the windshield. There were
quite a few times that there were just the two of us coming home in the dark.
He learned to fly instruments looking ahead without looking over the
window because he couldn’t see out the window. He could fly the thing fine
and tell me where to turn, he would know where to turn. He learned to fly
pretty good.
Terry Smith
One of the things that amazes me about the operation as it went on in the
50’s and the 60’s was that the training was focused on what the
biologist/pilot was doing; just exactly what you are doing.
I think the practical test guides started showing stall recovery out of a turn to
return to maintain the radius. In other words, the check rides that I watched
in the early 50’s, was in turning a stall. The recovery was made turning
again. There was certainly no sense in learning to fly and recovering out of
a stall in a turn by rolling the wings level when the whole reason that you
were turning was because of terrain. That was the reason that you were
stalling as you were turning probably after a pass or in the arena of wildlife
surveying where you had been slowing and started to turn inside of terrain
71
confines. As soon as you started to turn, of course, the thing starts to
shudder a bit. You know you are either going to stall or run into a tree.
I guess it was enlightening or amazing to me as I started to take private pilot
training that all those turning stalls were recovered to wing level or nose
down. After 15 years of watching people recover rolling back into the turn
holding altitude, it is amazing that we don’t have more responsive training in
the general aviation arena. You are very fortunate to have the kind of
training and the kind of check rides that you get. When you identify
something that is not being trained the way that you fly the airplane, then it
should obviously change because you fly the way you are trained. You are
supposed to fly like you’re trained and train like you fly. So when you find
something that doesn’t fit your operation, then get the training changed so
that it does. It doesn’t serve any purpose to be trained in something that you
are not going to do in real life.
72
Theron Smith
I would like to talk about the future of the people that I trained for many
years. The thing was some of these people had very few hours but we never
lost one and we never had a problem. We trained them well enough so that
the pilot knew what he was doing even if he didn’t have more than 50 hours.
You could teach a person so he would not get tangled up and kill himself.
He might bust up the airplane but not kill himself. I just wanted to say that.
Ray Tremblay
We talked about pushers on the airplane. I flew the Gullwing a lot and we
would have to have somebody in the back to push the tail around. So, we
had the blasters and the pushers and that’s what Jim was saying, “it was
always better to be the blaster than the pusher.”
I remember when Clarence Rhode, God bless him, decided we all had to
have uniforms. Then Clarence decided that all the pilots were going to have
to have a set of wings, which we didn’t care too much for but that’s what he
decided. Sig Olson was one of the biologist at the time and one of our
famous pushers. He told Clarence that if he required the pilots to have
wings, then the pushers should have recognition also. He told Clarence that
73
he wanted a pair of cross show-shoes on the sleeve and then a hash mark
would be given every time you got run over by a tail.
John Sarvis
I would like to mention one or two other names that come to mind before we
give the audience a chance to ask questions. Jay Hammond was an early
Fish and Wildlife pilot. Does anyone want to tell a “Jay Hammond” story?
Tom Wardleigh
The first winter I was here, I was working late one Sunday night. We were
getting the Gull Wing on skis. This thing had a double bungee, about the
size of my thumb and it was getting along toward 11:00 o’clock in the
evening, not a soul around. I found that with maximum effort I could hit the
little clevit up over the clamp with a clip on the fuselage. I was trying to
hook up this bungee, using both hands but when I would take one hand off
to put the bolt through the hole, I could not make it. It would slip back just
enough that I couldn’t do it. I would brace my elbow on my knee and was
just using all I had and was just desperate to get this damn thing done and go
home.
74
Out of nowhere, no sound, no door open or close, this big hairy hand came
down and grabbed the bungee and said, “why don’t you put the bolt in, son.”
That was the first time I ever met Jay Hammond.
We were tired and I was dirty. It was Sunday night and we decided to go get
a hamburger. We got in my car and drove around and we came to this little
Quonset hut, Garden of Eatin, it said. We went in and there were white table
napkins and just a beautiful restaurant inside this Quonset hut. I started to
excuse myself. I told the lady that we were just looking to get a hamburger
and that I was sorry to bother. She said, “sit down, we’ll make you a
hamburger.” One of my first meals I had in the City of Anchorage was at
the Garden of Eaten with Jay Hammond in my dirty old work cloths, almost
midnight on a Sunday night.
Ray Tremblay
You must read his book to appreciate some of the things that he did. I
remember the time he landed on skis down south of Cold Bay and he broke
both ankles. Jay is really crippled up badly. It is a shame to see him that
way, physically. If you see him or get a chance to write to him, give him a
“hello.” The last I heard, he went on a pheasant hunt with Jim Reardon.
75
Jim Branson
Jay is getting pretty badly crippled up and on this particular hunt, we had a
stool and we would set him up on one corner where the drive was going to
be. He could swing pretty good to the left as long as he could lean back on
the stool. He did pretty good. He is still a good shot.
John Sarvis
Another person is Gordy Watson. Gordy was the Area Director for quite a
while and did a fair amount of flying too.
76
Ray Tremblay
Yes, we just had a surprise birthday party for Gordy this past Saturday night
on his 75th birthday. As you know, Gordy was a biologist up here and then
became the Area Director and did a lot of flying. He was involved in one
serious wreck when we were looking for Clarence Rhode the second
summer when he was out there at Mt. Michelson. That accident is one that
we talk about. I talked about it with the pilots with the State and that is
going up into a canyon and then making a down wind turn and
unfortunately, that is what he did. He and Don Thurston spent 5-6 days up
there before they were found. He is doing fine. He is living in Girdwood
and he is still teaching skiing. He is leaving early tomorrow morning for
Hawaii.
John Sarvis
Let’s have a few questions from the audience.
Can someone address Bob Baker?
77
Jim King
Bob Baker was a predator/rodent control agent in Kotzebue for a number of
years and then he got tired of that and established Baker Aviation in
Kotzebue. One of the things that I remember was when he was still working
for the Service, he lived in this very small little house. It had a little porch
on it and on the roof of this porch, he had this pet raven that he was feeding.
We went by one day and Bob had decided that he didn’t like the
neighborhood that he was living in and he had his house hooked onto a
caterpillar. There were some skids under it (the house). He was towing it
down the road, moving it to a new location and here’s this raven sitting on
top of the porch roof like he was in command.
Question for Tom Wardleigh: How did the Mountain Goats get to Kodiak?
Tom Wardleigh
78
The goats got to Kodiak a few at a time and very, very carefully. There was
one person producing goats right at the head of Eagle River here. He would
trap them and give a call that we needed to come get the goats. My second
flight for the Fish and Wildlife Service was to take a brand new Pacer to the
head of Eagle River and pick up three Mountain Goats and bring them to
Anchorage. This guy was some sort of a character but he really knew how to
trap goats.
One day he called in and said he had some. We went up and he was sitting
on a rock with his chin in his hands looking very disgusted and a little bit
angry. He had been leading the goats across the creek. He had them on
leashes, and he stumbled and fell and there were three goats running around
with leashes, all of them wondering what to do next but none of them were
ready to get in the Pacer and come to town.
We would compound them in the hangar then haul them over to Uyak Bay
and put them off on the beach, all except one. That one, Dave Spencer, just
happened to be flying over Crescent Lake down on the Kenai and there was
a goat swimming across the lake so Dave landed. He did the proper
79
interview with a new employee that was sitting beside him and wrestled the
goat into the Widgeon and they wound up in Kodiak.
I guess under Mike’s tender care, there are now many goats, distributed from
one end of the island to the other and some limited amount of hunting for
them. They were, by the way, delightful creatures, as far I knew. We had
one big old billy goat but we didn’t want to make the trip all the way down
just for one goat. He became kind of the mascot. We had a small surplus
tug that we moved the airplanes around the hangar with and in the morning
you would come to work and here would be the goat standing up on the
hood of the tug just waiting for someone to come scratch his head between
his horns. It was really a pleasant animal and a delight to be around.
We finally hauled him down to Kodiak. As far as I know, the goat
transplant was one of the really successful things that took place.
Another fellow named Roger Allen. He was a sport fishery biologist. He
thought it would be nice to have some Grayling on the Kenai. There was
some preparation involved in making a still so long and so big around. We
fixed one of the Widgeons to capture the outlet air from a vacuum pump, put
80
it through an oil separator, run it down the still that was mounted on top of
the Widgeon, put the tube in through the little ventilator on top of the cabin
roof. You could stack milk cans full of fish and run the pump on one engine
and keep them oxygenated. We took a beach seine up to Lila Lake and
seined up some Grayling, put them into these water cans and loaded them in
the Widgeon. We would fly them down there to a lake and I was really
amazed because Roger was very thorough. He didn’t just pour the fish in
the water which I thought was what would happen. He put the can in the
lake until the temperatures stabilized and tipped the cans a little bit into the
water so the water exchange could take place between the can and the water.
Finally he laid the can down and every one of those Grayling immediately
went into the wheel well of the Widgeon that was on the beach. I guess they
wanted the shade; wanted to get out of the bright sunlight.
The transplant was one of the very successful ones and I understand the
Grayling fishing on the Kenai is very good. It makes you feel like that some
of that work was really worth while in the long term.
81
Question: Tom, can you tell us the story about the mechanic that ended the
engine failure problem? You told us about him when you were sitting in the
Beaver last summer.
Terry Smith
That’s the kind of thing that went on. Tom was heading up the maintenance
end and between Tom and Jerry and people like Vern, they just didn’t let
system failures or consistent failures continue. You just made a better part.
82
Tom Wardleigh
I guess I’m disconnected from that particular story. I do vividly remember
though an education in economics and integrity that we learned when we
first got the super Widgeons. We took the Widgeons down to the Portland
area and had Lycoming engines put on in place of the Rangers. On about
the first or second take off, one of them had a major failure. The little stud
that sticks out on the magneto to interrupt the rotations for the impulse
coupling, in order to start the engine more readily, broke and went down
between the crank shaft gear and the cam shaft gear which effectively split
the crank case. This just made a total ruin out of the engine. The series of
events were relayed to Lycoming. I think we had just bought 15 or 16 of
those engines, enough to put in 7 Widgeons and have a spare.
Lycoming disclaimed any responsibility because it was a Bendix magneto.
So we contacted Bendix and they were just as good as gold. They sent us a
brand new stud! (laughter)
Clayton Jenson came over to work at Fish and Wildlife, about the same time
that Lawhorn did, I think. We had a host of folks that came in all looking
for work on a day when we needed some folks. Clayton was a man whose
83
face showed a lot of mileage. He was a very quite fellow and I remember
interviewing him. I asked him if he could do sheet metal work and he said,
“yes.” I asked him how he was on fabric work and if he liked to do fabric
work. He said, “well, I can do it.” He had no enthusiasm about anything.
Vern Bookwallyer(??) was the overhaul man at that time and Vern, who was
about 70 years old, thought he would go homestead before he got old. He
resigned and went down on the Kenai. I was a little concerned on who was
going to do engine over haul. Clayton quietly came over one evening after
work. Everyone else had gone home. He said, “Tom, if you haven’t
promised the engine shop to somebody, I would really like to take a chance
at that.”
We had spare engines needing overhaul of every shape and form and
description. We had a lot of different airplanes in those days. I don’t
believe we had a spare made up for anything – not the Goose, not the
Widgeon, not the Gullwing, the Pacers or the Super Cubs. We had engines
waiting for overhauls.
In less than a year, we had spare engines for everything, ready to put into
airplanes. The piles of stuff had been sorted; the tools were all in order.
84
Clayton was one of the most effective and most pleasant men that I have
ever worked with. I had written up Clayton for an award for superior
performance in his job and sent it to Juneau.
One of our illustrious pilots had properly drained the oil from a Super Cub
one cold winter day and the next morning, forgot to put the oil in, took off
and flew up quite a ways and the engine failed. Well, because we had an
engine failure on one of Clayton’s overhauled engines, his award was denied
and I still bitterly regret that. He had a heroic performance working for the
Fish and Wildlife for a very modest wage. He just out performed anything I
had ever seen in the area of dedication to the job. That was one of the
saddest days of my life when his award was denied.
John Sarvis
We will stop now for lunch and those of you who want to rejoin us after
lunch are welcome to resume some of the stories.
85
Ray Tremblay
I have a story with a moral, I guess. One of the things we teach off airport
take offs and landings is when you get ready to take off, you go ahead and
you walk the gravel bar out very carefully, and you mark your spot. Usually
you select a spot that says this is where I am going to take and if I don’t get
off at this spot I’ve got enough room left so that I can stop the airplane.
I went on a moose hunt with a friend one time in his airplane. There were
three of us. It was over in the King Salmon area. It was back in the years
when you could locate, land, shoot. It was legal. We flew around and we
spotted a nice cow moose and we landed in pretty much tundra type terrain.
It was a beautiful day and after we got through butchering the animal, I said,
“I’ll pack this thing down on the gravel bar for take off.” He said, “no, no, I
can take off right here.”
It was his airplane, with big tires and he said he was going to take the plane
off from right there where we were. He did everything right – he walked it
all out, he took the seats out and he put it at this spot and he said, “now this
is where I should be flying.” Then he put some other seats in a different spot
and he said, “now here, if I am not flying at this spot, this is where I chop it
86
and I’ve got enough roll-out left that I don’t have a problem with the
airplane.”
I thought, “man, this guy is really good, he knows what he is doing!” So, we
loaded half the moose in the airplane and the other fellow and I stood at the
halfway point and watched this take off. It was extremely rough terrain and
the airplane is bouncing and bouncing. It gets to point one and it ain’t flying
and it is bouncing and it gets to point two and it ain’t flying and he keeps
going and he keeps going. He gets to the end, goes through the brush, hits a
creek and the airplane turns over and it’s wrecked. I start running down to
grab him out and I said, “damn, what in the hell did you do wrong?” He
said, “Ray, it was just ready to fly, it was just ready to fly!” Well, there was
no way that plane was going to fly!
The point of this story is, and I have told it many times, when you make a
plan and it’s a good plan, stick with it.
87
Theron Smith
It was getting pretty close to Christmas and I was living in Bethel. This guy
wanted to be flown down to the southeast, out to the mountain, more or less.
There was a cabin there and he was going to stay there for the winter and try
and do some trapping. The weather was fairly decent, so away we went and
the river was still open and he had always been able to walk it across the
river. We landed over in the grass. He said, “I can’t wait here till that gets
frozen, I’ll freeze out here and won’t have enough food.” He said, “if you
could get me on the other side of the river, that would be best thing.”
I kept looking around quite a bit and I decided that maybe I could land in a
certain place in there on the other side, pretty close to the cabin. Then I
figured that I would have to chop down some trees to get out of there. I
landed there. It was fairly short but made it o.k. The snow was about 3 feet
deep, all soft. It hadn’t frozen at the bottom. It was all soggy wet at the
bottom. Of course, you stop the airplane in there, the skis freeze.
We got the stuff out of there and I started chopping and I was going to go
around the bend, follow the oxbow of the river and turn off and come across
this thing then I would get off the ground and away I would go. The trees
88
were up pretty big. I taxied back and forth in the snow and got it so I had a
little bit of freezing on it but I should have stayed there another day. Here I
come around the corner and soon as I got off the ice onto the snow the
airplane wouldn’t come around with me like it was supposed to. It ran into a
tree and made a big dent about a third down the wing. That broke the tree
down, of course, so I got that out of there. I decided that maybe I would just
start across the ice there instead of going around.
By this time, the snow was freezing a little on the edges. I got in and turned
around and got it squared away and away I go and all of a sudden I didn’t
quite make it and there was a whole bunch of small trees right over there and
I ran through those. That kind of messed up the airplane quite a bit. There
was a small lake in there that was hardly frozen at all. I went across that and
got stopped in there. The one ski went down about 2 feet and I thought that
was just the end of the day because there was no way I could get out yet that
day.
So we walked down to the cabin which was a couple miles away. I didn’t
have enough wire on the airplane because it was tangled up on the tree and
pulled it out. I went over and got his cabin fired up. We stayed the night.
89
The next day I came down and got the wiring and radio fixed up so I could
call. I called down to Bethel and told them I had a problem that they had to
bring another airplane over.
In the meantime I was fixing a place to fly there. We trimmed down a bunch
of trees, used our snowshoes and got the snow all packed down. We had a
nice place there by the third day. Finally here comes a plane in with a
mechanic. We had to glue down a bunch of the fabric. Putting that glue
down didn’t work very well in the cold. It took a few days there and we
finally got it out of there. The mechanic flew it back to Anchorage and I got
the good airplane.
Jim Branson
I have been terrified, but it is hard to pick out a single incident. I can tell
you about one that Smitty got me into and he also got me out of.
I was just getting a float rating. It was in June, a beautiful day. I was based
in Kenai and I went up to Anchorage and got my FAA flight check for a
float rating and then I had to get one from Theron before I could take the
airplane home and use it.
90
Theron was pretty busy all the time so sometimes you had to wait quite a
while before he could get around to doing something for you. About 9:00
that night, we finished the flight check. He turned me loose o.k. and I
headed on back for home. We were using Longmere Lake in those days and
I suspect everybody still is. It is a fairly long, narrow lake and lies north and
south with trees on east/west and north side with long open muskeg on the
south side.
It was a beautiful evening and while flying down there, I could see all these
beautiful golden lakes underneath me. I came around, made my approach
from the south, came into Longmere and got between those trees and the
world turned solid black. I couldn’t see anything.
Theron had drummed into me and everybody else too what you do on glassy
water and what you do on whiteouts. I set it up, waiting to feel the water
and hoping I felt it before I came to the north end of the lake. I did, of
course, but if it hadn’t been for Theron being late, I wouldn’t have been
landing that late and if you hadn’t taught me how to get out of it, I would
have really messed it up.
91
Ray Tremblay
Do you remember Bob Vanderpool? He had a flying service and he flew out
of Red Devil, Sleetmute. I was in McGrath at the time. He was flying a
Pacer and he had gone into town. He also had a trading post, a store. He
bought a whole bunch of groceries and things. He was flying back and he
came through the pass and was coming down the south fork of the
Kuskokwim River, through Rainy Pass. The weather was way down. As
most guys did, he was letting one tank run dry. He was having trouble
staying visual so he’s flying just on top of the treetops and the tank drains so
he reaches down to the selector valve. On the Pacer it is right there by your
knee. He reached down there to switch the tank and the selector value had
fallen off. Now he has no gas, and so he crashes into a bunch of scrub
spruce.
The next day he was picked up but now he has this airplane there and it is
pretty well smashed up. They got the plane back up somehow. He got the
gear back on, put a new prop on and all the ripped up fabric and everything –
we’re talking 40 below zero – they wet sheets down and molded them on the
plane. They froze there of course and he actually flew that airplane to
McGrath. He stayed very low so he didn’t get any kind of an inversion.
92
--end of Tape #3—
--start of Tape #4—
Richard Hensel
Before I was privileged to check out with the Fish and Wildlife Service, and
as a means of accumulating hours toward my private license I sometimes
flew cross country flights in conjunction with regular Service work. This
relates to the time I crashed the flying clubs T-craft in Karluk Lake. On a
bright clear April day, the 21st in fact, the plan was for me to deliver some
freight and mail to Camp Island fish encampment and chack the lakes
condition that was in the later stages of breakup. The lake was essentially
ice free and absolutely flat calm, like a mirror, when I arrived an hour and a
half later from a Kodiak takeoff.
93
94
Having had some training in the execution of glassy water landings I aligned
my straight in approach to touch down as instructed using the island
shoreline to help gauge my descending height. Peering out one side window
and then the other, I determined I was much too high and would overshoot
that point on the island where I needed to beach. A correction was in order
and valid, however I turned over the lake, rather than over the island for
another go around, added some more power, and moments laterturned again,
over water, to return to the island. The first turn was naturally a fatal
mistake because the shoreline reference would be lost. Halfway through the
second turn, my right wingtip hit the water and the nose first impact was
severe enough to shear the floats from the fuselage. I was uninjured but
stunned and totally dismayed as to how and why this could have happened–
airborne one second, a dead stop on the next. The cockpit was filling with
water at a rapid rate so I opened the door, inflated my vest and swam to the
tail still projecting from the water. Meanwhile several persons on shore
witnessed the incident and a skiff was promptly launched for my rescue. I
remained relatively calm, hardly any shock until I was situated in the main
dormitory facility at which time I started to tremble severely. The plane of
course sank. I radioed Troyer to have a Kodiak Airways Goose stop by for
my return to Kodiakafter convincing him over the air that the engine
95
wouldn’t start because it was floded, really flooded. The T-craft is still to
this day at rest in the bottom of Karluk Lake.
Jim King
One of the problems for me used to be flying into Lake Hood. One of the
elements that we had to deal with that hasn’t been mentioned is the little
radios that we had in the Pacers and the Cubs. They had a reel and a wire
and you had to reel this wire out and kind of tune it for length with a little
dial in order to make the radio work. You had to have a different length of
antennae for each frequency. Approaching Lake Hood, you had to make
your first contact with the tower with the antennae out, as well as trying to
figure out which way to land and watch for other traffic and kind of fit into
the thing there. When you got in the traffic pattern you needed to wind the
wire this thing in then you could still talk to the tower when you were in the
traffic pattern.
When we first started using those things, they had a little deal that looked
like a little windsock to pull the antennae out. I guess a lot of them got lost
because they would catch in the water. Regularly, people would come into
the Aircraft Division and pull the plane in and park it some where or other or
96
come up the ramp with the wire still out. (The shop stopped using those
windsocks and hung a little plastic funnel on the wire bottom sideforward
and this wouldn’t tear loose). If I was on amphibs, I would inevitably be
greeted in Anchorage by Terry Smith, all two feet of him, announcing, “your
antennae is out!”
Cal Lensink
That one approach, you would come in basically following International
Airport Road and then take a right turn for final into the Fish and Wildlife
Cove. If you were coming out there with 65 turns out on your antennae,
there was no way you were going to reel it in before you hit the water. I
didn’t even try!
John Sarvis
Like you guys, I landed a couple of times with the antennae out and didn’t
realize I hadn’t put it in. It would be dragging along and someone would tell
you about it and you would be all embarrassed.
One time I landed and I already knew it was out. I was trying to crank it
back in and just like the fuel valve you were talking about, the handle fell off
97
and soon as the handle fell off, the whole thing spun off. I didn’t have
anyway to crank it up and I had a whole pile of wire in my lap. That time, at
least I knew it.
Ray Tremblay
Remember the Gullwing Stinson had a lead ball and when you left that lead
ball someplace, it was effective. I came to land at Phillips Field one time
and I started out to reel this thing in and I came in right over this house.
There was a guy working on the roof and I remember him looking at my
airplane and I was thinking what was the matter with him. Then all of a
sudden I see him jump off the roof! I guess he thought he was going to be
hit in the head with that lead ball!
Bob Richey
These are some hard acts to follow, however, each one of them – I must
have had my share – because each one of these gentlemen remind me of a
few things.
Speaking of Lake Hood and not being safe, I was taxiing out – we had that
amphib 185 – I was cleared for take off to the west, out of Spenard Lake.
98
Most of us are listening to what traffic is going on before we go in and we
ought to be listening before we take off, right?
I was cleared to take off to the west and I was way on the east end of
Spenard Lake so I was just getting up on the step, and I heard the tower say,
“cleared for the east.” I thought, wait a minute, and before I got to the
channel, here comes this Cub around the corner headed right for me. I just
chopped it and got out of the way. I hadn’t hit the channel yet.
The tower said, “sorry about that.” That is all he said. The rest of the
summer, on that amphib, I didn’t mind landing on the lake because I could
see what was going on. For the rest of the summer, it shook me up so much,
I always taxied to the strip on that amphib and took off for wherever I was
going.
I guess all of us have, especially in the areas we were flying, ended with a
few dings. Earlier you were talking about flying with loads. I had a
biologist to take up to the mountains in the very early spring. We used to do
a lot of landings up there. This was a particular Saturday morning. I guess I
99
had other things to do and I showed up and you know how these people are
bringing so much gear. I had a 180 on wheel/skis.
I should have made two trips. I realized that later. I stuffed everything in
and we took off. Because I had plenty on and I had a pretty good coming in,
I cut it a little bit short because I didn’t want to run out of the saddle and go
on off down in the canyon. Everything looked good for a moment and then
all of a sudden, we went through the willows and there I was. We unloaded
everything, and we would first get one ski up and then the other one would
cut in.
After about 6 hours, they came looking for us. I think it was Dave Spencer.
He found us and I was able to talk to him and about that time, we were just
about to get to the solid stuff and I did get out of there o.k. But, these types
of things do happen. When I was flying the Goose – I had a lot of good
mentors – I attribute some of my deafness in my right ear to my mentors.
I was with Tom Belleau. We had taken some people to King Salmon and
then I was just starting to learn to fly the Goose and Tom said, “let’s go over
to south Naknek. There is a good cross wind over there.” The wind was
100
blowing about 12-14 knots. I wasn’t getting the nose down. He said, “put
the nose down, get the nose down.” I stuck the nose down and we were
going along on the gravel on the nose for a moment and he said, “well, not
that far down!”
We were working some lakes out there and I was lining up for a lake that I
wasn’t sure at that time how deep the lake was. You use to be able to tell if
a lake is deep or not by what you could see on the surface. He told me to go
in and land on this lake and just before we got there, it just didn’t look right
to me and I poured the coals to it and he said, “what did you do that for?”
Well, it just didn’t look good to me so we never went back to that particular
lake.
Each one of you today have brought your experiences here. As far as
accidents, I have been very fortunate. I have been kind of slow in pushing it.
A lot of times I would have Washington folks with me and others. One
thing about Washington folks, it is hard for them to unwind if they are just
coming up for the first time and they want the wheels up at 8:00 and they
mean 8:00. A lot of times it is hard for them to relax.
101
I had some people with me once and we were flying from Fort Yukon to
Kaktovik. I had a woman with us from Washington and over the trip, we
kind of lost her at Bethel because she had never tented before. She had
never had on a pair of hip boots before and it was a pretty rough trip. We
went to the Selawik River. We were between Fort Yukon going over the
hills. I was probably 9,000 – 10,000 feet and she had to make a pit stop.
She came forward and told me what she had to do and I said, “I’m sorry,
there are no pit stops between here and Kaktovik.” I told her that I had a
coffee can in the back. She went to the back and found the coffee can. We
landed at Kaktovik and she came up to me and she said, “what should I do
with the coffee can?”
I was only in one accident. That was over at Chisik Island many years ago.
I had flown in there in the Cub. I had another pilot with me. We were doing
some enforcement work over there. The winds started to come up in the
afternoon as they normally do and it was getting a little choppy out there and
he got really worried about it and he said, “we got to get out of here, we got
to go.” I said, “well, o.k.” He had quite a bit of float time and he wanted to
fly it so I let him.
102
He headed out on this chop and of course after hitting three or four of those,
we were put up in the air but instead of coming down and waiting until we
got flying speed, I’m sitting back there realizing that the plane is not ready to
fly yet. It was a really helpless feeling. I wanted to shout to him to get the
nose down but I thought if I did that, he might stub it. But just sitting back
there knowing what was happening was such a terribly helpless feeling.
The minute it started to fall off on that right wing, of course he stalled it out
by trying to catch it, I still see today that left wing hit the water. The next
thing, I still see that prop hitting that green water and over we went. What
came to my mind next was I took my elbow and tried to knock out the
plastic window and in my mind, I said, “you know, if I want to see another
sunrise, I’ve got to get out of this damn thing.” That is just what went
through my mind.
I finally got the door open and tried to get out and I forgot that I still had my
seatbelt on. I did get out and we were upside down. That green water was
coming up. I finally pulled the pilot out and he kept saying, “what
happened, what happened.”
103
Some fishermen there at Chisik came over and picked us up. Later we got
picked up in a Goose.
That was the only serious ding that I ever had. I have been very fortunate. I
have had some wonderful mentors, going back to Theron. I ran through an
awful lot of others and I picked up something from each of them. I was just
really fortunate to fly all the stuff we had.
We had the Baron’s which were beautiful. I remember taking a 58 up on the
slope there and landing at Franklin Bluffs. We were trying to get in some
VIP’s. We went over to McGrath and on to Fairbanks to pick up some more
people and went up to Galbrath Lake then I was to take them into Dead
Horse and just before we got there, within 15 or 20 minutes, Dead Horse
went down. I was flying the highway up there and there was an old strip
there, probably 5,000 feet or so at Franklin Bluffs. I went in there and
started to drive it and there was a helicopter coming up the road and I made
contact with him and I said, “would you mind driving that strip down there
and let me know if there are any serious problems with it.”
104
He told me there was a big ditch at the north end, but otherwise, it looked
pretty good. So I drug it again with a plane full of people. It was a Baron
58. OAS had leased it. We went in there with no problem. We turned
around and taxiing out, sure enough, there was that big ditch. If we had hit
that, we would just have wiped it out. We taxied up and parked. A pick-up
truck came out and said, “what in the hell are you doing here, this strip
hasn’t been used for 2 years!”
They loaned us their vehicle and the VIP’s were able to use it. I just stayed
there with the airplane. These things do go on. I had some really good trips.
John Sarvis
There are a couple other people that we haven’t heard from or talked about.
Al Crane comes to mind. Does anyone have an “Al Crane” story?
Ave Thayer is another pilot that couldn’t be here today.
105
Theron Smith
I want to talk about something and that is landing in water where you don’t
know the depth. One of the things you know if you practice this enough is
that the water lilies, the water is deep enough when they are up on the water.
You can land anywhere where there are lily pads as long as you don’t run
into something in the middle where it is empty. There are other plants that
you can do the same thing with. This is just something to keep in mind
when you run into this dilemma.
Dick Hensel
One story coming to mind about Ave Thayer concerns the time he was
circling an osprey nest on the Kenai Moose Refuge when suddenly an
osprey came crashing through the windshield of his Super Cub. Despite the
guts, blood, blurred vision and a dramatically altered aerodynamic he
managed to land safely.
Theron Smith
I want to tell another story. There were a couple of people from Washington
that wanted to travel around Cordova. I was flying several other people
during the summer. I had to just pick them up when I could and take care of
them when I could because I had others.
106
I was down at Kodiak. I was there a day or so with them and I picked them
up and was supposed to take them to McGrath but you couldn’t get over
there because the pass was closed. It was coming from the west and getting
pretty heavy. I came back to Homer and landed and got something to eat
and waited to decide if we could go in that evening. It was clearing up so I
waited for a while longer and we decided it was going to be o.k., so I
climbed out of there and I was going to climb 2,000 feet above the
mountain. I was going to climb up and go on instruments.
As soon as I climbed up there, ice started forming on the airplane so I
dropped another 1,000 feet and was going to be more or less clear of icing. I
was continuing on and as I was getting across the water going into the
mountains, there was a big roll of stuff coming over the mountains. I
thought I could handle it all right and as soon as I dove into that, the airplane
was just bouncing around and I was in the mountains by then and I was
losing altitude. I thought if I turned around, I would be sure to hit the
mountains because by the time I turned around, I would be too low so I kept
on going and at this time, ice was forming on the plane again.
107
I was using every inch I had to keep it higher as we went over the
mountains. I felt that I was still losing but I was going slowly. I had to
watch the direction we were going because the thing seemed to be blowing
south. I had to turn the thing about 30 degrees to keep control then I decided
that I had better turn it a little bit north and get out of there and get over to a
lake. I thought if I don’t hit anything, I’m going to make it! That’s about all
you could say, really.
It was hard to get a point on Iliamna River so I moved over north and pretty
soon, down I went and I couldn’t see out of the windshield because it was all
iced up. I saw behind that gee there was water down there so I made the
lake and figured out exactly where I was. Pretty soon, the ice started to
come off. My passengers didn’t seem to be interested in any of this. They
weren’t scared! We landed there and stayed the night. Maybe they didn’t
know enough to be scared. That’s about the closest I ever came to killing
myself and everybody with me.
Ray Tremblay
I think it is about time to tell some “fess-up” stories.
108
When I first started flying, I was flying the Gullwing Stinson out of
Fairbanks. That to me was the best airplane in the world. I really loved that
airplane.
They had a wildlife conference going on in Fairbanks and all of the
Canadian biologists were there, from all over. There was a concern about
the caribou. We had lots of caribou and Canada didn’t have their caribou.
We had a few of the big caribou experts there. Ray Woolford said to me,
“why don’t you fly them over the Beaver Creek area and show them the
calving grounds.” It was the time of year when they were calving and there
were just thousands of them over there. He said, “I’ll send Sig Olson with
you and Sig will be the biologist, he’ll talk and you just be the pilot.”
If you remember the Gullwing Stinson, it had a fairly high nose. There was
a seat for three people in the back and then there was a pilot seat and the co-pilot
seat. To get in it, you had to go through and up between the seats.
They came out and the airplane was all ready to go. I got them all in and
then I thought they would like to listen to the tower. I figured I might as
well give them the whole nine yards.
109
I turned on the speakers. Back then, there were no hangars, nothing in
Fairbanks. The runway was brand new. I am parked right in front of the
tower. Sig, my partner, was supposed to be helping me. I relied on him,
which was a mistake.
The point of this story is after I had them seated and had the engine running,
ran the prop through, and I had everything ready to go. I called the tower
and I said, “tower, this is N-782. I am ready to taxi to the active runway.”
There was this pause and finally this voice came back and it said, “782 you
are cleared to taxi, suggest you untie your wing first!”
Now I have to shut the engine off, come back down, step on their feet and
get out and untie – you can see by now how this is really building up
confidence in your passengers. The whole trip went down from there.
One other story. Like all of you, we had people we had to fly around. We
had some congressmen and others that we had to fly. We had the Grumman
Goose. We had the Grumman out in front of the hangar. It was all polished
up and it was just shining. I had to be in my uniform. We had those brown
110
uniforms. I am in the cabin taking the straps and folding them nice and neat.
There were going to be some congressmen and their wives.
I’ve got leather shoes on and pretty soon this cavalcade of cars come up.
Big limo’s, etc. They start getting out of the cars in front of the airplane, I
walk out of the plane, and you know the steps that hang – well as I get out,
my foot slips and it slides down inside of that track. Now, I have two
choices – one is to fall forward or just stay back stuck. I went forward and I
am lying there with my foot hanging in the air. They are all standing there
looking at me. I said, “good morning, I am your pilot!”
111
Dick Hensel
112
I you might sayf we’re fessing up, Rays story reminded me of an incident
one summer when the Kodiak salmon canneries began operating at full bore.
The weather was bad, Kodiak Airways was having difficulty flying cannery
workers out of Kodiak and started bussing Filipinos to the neighboring
Anton Larson bay where the higher ceiling permitted them to land, load and
transport them to outlying island canneries. Coming from Afognak in a
small skiff, I arrived at the ramp area with the intention of anchoring the
skiff out in deep water so it wouldn’t go dry. On the road above the ramp
was a bus load of waiting passengers and as I set about making preparationsI
noted they were keenly observing each of my actions. The anchoring trick
consisted of coiling the anchor line on the quarter deck then placing the
anchor on top of the coil. A second line connected to the anchor was to be
tied off above the high tide mark to later enable pulling the anchor along
with the skiff to the waterline the next time the skiff was to be used. Once
the second line was tied to the anchor it was a matter of giving the skiff a
tremendous push until it went far enough to deeper water then next tu